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POST MORTEM 
OPINIONS 



By 
THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



American Metaphysical Association 
Sioux City, Iowa 



V J 



Copyright, 1920 

BY 

American Metaphysical Association 



HAMMOND PRESS 
B. CONKEY COMPANY 
CHICAQO 



"^ 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Silence— My Funeral— To Friends— 

God's Plan-My Son 1-7 

II. Soldiers— Soldiers' Message to You 8-10 

III. The Kaiser- Soldier Girls 12-13 

IV. Monuments— Pensions 15-17 

V. The Packers— Market G a m b 1 i n g— New 

Ideals— Socialism— Government Reform — 
The President— Third Term— President 

Wilson 19-23 

VI. Bolshevism— Organized Labor 24 

VII. Returning Heroes— Justice— Service Flags — 

Unredeemed Promises— The Sailor 28-31 

VIII. The Red Cross 33 

IX. Subscriptions— Quotas— Churches — God — 
Judgment— Near Death — Universal 

Brotherhood 38-42 

X. Wage Earners— Higher Education— Idle- 
ness— Ideals 43-45 

XI. Suffragettes— In Washington, D. C— In 
Paris-Equality— Wife in Office— The 

Other Side 47-49 

XII. Child Labor- Child Help- More Light- 
Uniform Dress— Health— Comradeship— 

Universal Training 51-56 

XIII. Government Aid— Home— Migratory Amer- 
icans—Birth Rate— Children— Eugenics- 
War Saving Stamps— U. S. Bonds— The 
Fleecer— The Cause of Anarchy— A Law 

as a Soldier's Memorial 57-68 

iii 



iv CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XIV. Loyalty— Party Issues— Party Issues in 
1920— Dark Horse Most Powerful- 
Politicians, Restore Illusions— The Plat- 
form—Hectoring Policy— Planks— Thin 

Ice 70-78 

XV. Congress— Precedents— Law — Jury Serv- 
ice—The Judge 79-82 

XVI. Mistaken Views— Attacks on the Presi- 
dent—Modern Conditions— The League 
of Nations— America a League of States 84-87 
XVII. The Budget System— Our System— Present 

Needs— America a Mecca 89-92 

XVIII. George Washington— His Customs— Presi- 
dents in Europe— Died on the Job — 
Memorial Orations 93-95 

XIX. War— Belgium and France— England— 
Militarism the Cause— The Excuse- 
Germany— Home Life— King Albert- 
France— Officers— P lunder— Son with 
Me— G e r m a n Republic— Indemnity- 
Germany and the League— Memory— War 
Is Hell— Brotherhood— International Pol- 
itics— War Gas— Military Police— Love, 
Justice and Liberty— Flag of Glory— 

America's Position— The Answer 97-115 

XX. France and Belgium— England at War- 
English Women— Italy— Russia 117-118 

XXI. Taft and Wilson— The President's Critics— 

A Spirit's Thoughts— Honor- Wilson. .121-124 
XXII. W. W. and W. H. T.— Congress -Rail- 
roads— Leasing the Roads 126-130 

XXIII. Shipping— American Bottoms— Brutality — 
Exporting— The Call of the Sea— Busy 
Times— Foreign Markets— Big Questions 
for the Voters— America for Amer- 
icans 131-136 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

XXIV. Demobilization— The Solution— Positions 

Filled- The Problem 137-140 

XXV. Army Upkeep— Half Million— Universal 

Training— Cantonments . . .143-146 

XXVI. The Army, Navy and Marines— De- 
stroy e r s— Hydroplanes— Over-Pre- 
paredness— The National Guard 148-150 

XXVII. Division of the Spoils— T. R. at the 
Peace Conferenc e— Boundary of 

France— Colonies 152-155 

XXVIII. Wilson at Paris— Indemnity— Germany's 

Moral Debt 157-160 

XXIX. U. S. and the League of Nations— Monroe 
Doctrine and Mexico— Mexico and the 

League 162-165 

XXX. The Ireland Question— In England- 
Universal Peace— Cuba— Lost Hope .. 167-170 
XXXI. Clear Vision— Rejoice with Me— Death's 

Choosing— My Plea— In Closing 172-175 



PUBLISHER'S NOTICE 

npHE party who dictated the manuscript of 
A this volume says he is the late Col. Theo- 
dore Roosevelt. The contents of this volume 
is the only proof we have to offer. 

We do not claim nor pretend that he wrote 
it. It was written down by Augusta Erwin at 
the dictation of someone who she could not see, 
but who said he is the party to whom we have 
given the credit. 

The large number of subjects dealt with and 
the unique manner in which they are handled 
is the best proof. 



Vll 



PREFACE 

npHIS book will be composed entirely of mes- 
A sages from the spirit of Col. Theodore 
Eoosevelt. This preface is being dictated by 
Chas. G. Kuhlman, spiritual guide of Augusta 
Erwin, through whose spiritual power this 
volume is compiled. 

It is the greatest gift that can be bestowed 
on mortal — that of actually conversing with 
the living dead — and I from spirit land will say 
that that gift in its highest sense and power 
has been bestowed on my daughter Augusta, 
through whose physical hand we spirits can 
write, she recording as we give, respecting our 
judgment as to proper wording, etc. 

This volume will be typed as a manuscript 
just as received, beginning this third day of 
February, 1919. 

I, from spirit land, have dictated this preface 
to my daughter. The rest of the volume I will 
leave to the discretion of the Colonel. 

In making this assertion before receiving 
even so much as one word of a message from 
him, I am not taking haphazard chance on his 



x PREFACE 

acquiescence, as I have already talked over with 
him the advisability of this work being written. 
It not only met with his entire approval, but 
with enthusiasm on his part as well. 

Nothing more that I can add will tend to 
make this work clearer to your mind, so I bid 
you all good evening. 

Yours in spirit since 1914, 

Chas. G. Kuhlman, M. D. 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 



CHAPTER I 

THE SILENCE 

BACK from the great silence I come in a way 
that will prove to be a surprise to all, and 
to all I wish to convey my heartiest regards. 
I am not dead, I was but resting for a brief 
period. 

Death, the very word conjures up terrors for 
the uninitiated, but death is but a transition 
from one state into another, and the words that 
are uttered at almost every funeral have a far 
deeper meaning than the average mind can 
grasp. 

grave, where is thy victory! death, 
where is thy sting! The victory is all on the 
side of the one dying, he or she gaining every- 
thing through the simple act of dying. 

Some fight death for a long period, as did I, 
but could they but realize what death really 
means, it would have no terror for them. I 
fought it off with strength and vigor of will 
mostly, but when I finally saw that Gabriel was 
the stronger of the two, I acquiesced and went 
with him without a struggle. 



2 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

I'll fight as long as I think I am right in 
fighting against a thing, or person, hut when I 
see that I am on the wrong side of the fence 
I try to give np as hest and easiest I can. I 
lived and I died following this same principle. 
Now I will try to re-live again and I feel sure 
that my policy will prove as well here as it did 
there on earth. 

MY FUNERAL 

My funeral was simple as I wished no dis- 
play, and I want to thank the sincere friends 
who wept for my departure from amongst their 
midst that day. When strong men can be 
brought to shed tears over the exit of another 
it shows that friendship was not but an out- 
ward symbol, but that it must have been en- 
grained in their hearts. I expected no such 
deep feeling on the part of those to whom I 
especially wish to convey these felicitations, al- 
though the expressions of the countless admirers 
of my policies and of my so-called virility was 
not more than I would expect upon the news 
of my death, as would it be on the death of 
any man of prominence before public eye, and 
to say that I was prominent always before the 
public is but stating a fact, not trying to make 
an assertion. 

TO FRIENDS 

To my family and to my friends I wish to 
send my greetings from this great spirit land, 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 3 

unknown to them in flesh but inhabited by a 
far greater majority of souls than is the mortal 
earth today. They will, no doubt, be skeptical 
at first of the authenticity of these words as 
being sent by me from spirit land, but I am sure 
that enough proof can be given them that will 
in time satisfy their every doubt. My one re- 
gret, and one that I am afraid will never be 
remedied, is absolute proof that certain in- 
dividuals are given the power by their Creator 
to converse with the living spirits of the so- 
called dead. It is but simple conversing, but 
because of the fact that all are not given this 
wonderful power, few can really understand, 
and while many believe in spirit, it usually 
takes strong tests to prove that all is straight. 
This, no doubt, is due to abuses that are prac- 
ticed by some to fake and fleece the public, 
but it should be an easy matter to judge be- 
tween the true and the false by the quality of 
the messages and also in many cases by the 
manner of receiving. 

Had I been possessed of but an inkling of 
what is clear to me now, I could have been the 
most indomitable figure for good in America, 
but it does not seem to be God's plan to have 
mortal man know more than He thinks best. 

god's plan 

There is a God as surely as there is a visible 
sun by day and stars and moon by night. A 



4 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

spirit father, guardian of all, regardless of race, 
color or creed. He is not unjust. He exacts 
nothing from man beyond man's power to do. 
He asks no sacrifice of man beyond that of 
man's strength to make, and when the great 
summons comes that calls man home to Him, 
He does not tax man with sins that man was 
powerless to avert, nor does He hold him guilty 
for technicalities, but He does make man under- 
stand that He is Master as well as Father, and 
man must obey. 

If man has transgressed on earth, he must 
pay for his transgressions here in full measure, 
working out his salvation according to his sins. 
He is not looked down upon, nor is he shunned, 
but he is not allowed the freedom and the peace 
that is accorded others in a more advanced 
stage of purity. He is allowed to raise him- 
self to a level with those to whom he will be 
most congenial and who will be to him the most 
congenial companions. Each has his plane and 
lives here a life that is quite a bit on the same 
order as earthly life, although without the little 
worries and the bigger burdens and trials of 
earthly existence. Of course, we all live here 
in a finer state of being, even our dwelling 
places, beautiful as they are, are but forms, 
but you of earth, are you any surer that you 
are living in physical existence, and that what 
you feel sure is material substance, than are 
we? Physical life is but a dream state after 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 5 

all, and we of spirit life miss nothing by the 
change but the fetterment of the body and the 
petty ills of physical life. 

All that goes into the making of an ideal 
existence we have here. Homes of beauty, 
adorned with all we could hope for in any 
existence, beautiful flowers to make our out- 
look more beautiful, loved ones around us 
again, friends that we have lost through death 
we find again, memories that to us were sweet 
on earth are here brought back again into 
realities, companions we have on every side 
of worth and of congeniality. God himself 
watching over us with loving care as a shepherd 
his flock, or a father his children. No sights 
or sounds of a disturbing nature, all is tran- 
quility to those who wish it so, each man or 
woman giving the best that is in them in love 
and in guardianship to those on earth best be- 
loved by them, and each one allowed to carry 
out his or her own plans according as they think 
best, something which I am sorry to add is 
impossible on earth. 

To those fortunate enough to be able to carry 
out their plans as they see them on earth, this 
will prove surprising, as it will show them 
that others are equipped as well, if not in some 
cases better, mentally to carry out ideas, but 
are prevented from lack of capital to carry them 
through. 

Money is the one great handicap on earth, 



6 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

or should I say the lack of money is, as with- 
out its help no one can accomplish much; but 
here all that is changed. There is no exchange 
of money, no talk of wealth beyond wealth of 
love and happiness. There is no eternal striv- 
ing after position, power and display. No 
golden goal for which to bicker and fight. 
There is a certain goal, it is true, but that can 
be reached by all through their own efforts, and 
these efforts are not base, striving to outdo a 
rival, or to climb the ladder of success ahead 
of another. 

All have an equal chance here to reach the 
plane for which they are fitted, and they reach 
that through purity based on service, and hav- 
ing reached their final place they find perfect 
contentment without jealousies or bickerings. 
They mingle with fellow spirits of the same 
mentality and class, each pursuing his own 
spirit life as he sees fit, with love as a guide. 
If earth could be run on this same plan, how 
much nicer it would be, but then I am afraid 
that if earth were as is this land of spirit life, 
I am afraid all would be loath to leave it, and 
this place would have no extraordinary charm. 
God knows best. He built the earth. He peo- 
pled the earth and He runs the earth on His 
own plan. We of spirit, or you of mortal life, 
can change this plan not one atom. The mills 
of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly 
small. I can give you this little glimpse into 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 7 

this life I so lately entered, but I cannot tell 
all of its wonders in such a way that mortal 
mind could really grasp every detail. I have 
not been asked to curtail my descriptions, but 
words of earthly coining are not large enough 
to word what I would like to convey. 

MY SON 

I have met many former friends who had 
passed away before my call. I have been re- 
united with those of my closely related loved 
ones, and I have clasped to my heart my son 
who lost his life in France. 



CHAPTER II 

SOLDIEKS 

T HAVE seen the mighty band whose lives 
■*- were given in the cause. They are a mighty 
host, but undaunted and supreme. No mother, 
father, wife or other kindred need feel sorrow 
at their loss. Cut off in the prime of manhood, 
it seemed and seems to the living, that theirs 
was a great sacrifice, with all life before them, 
to be cut down as unheaded wheat in a hail 
storm, but theirs was not the loss. They have 
gained by the great transition, and though the 
world can see nothing yet of the true gains 
that will arise through the death of these noble 
boys, it will come in the end. They have not 
given their lives needlessly, though it seems 
a dastardly crime that any one nation could 
have been the means of turning the world 
topsy-turvy, and in doing so to shed the blood 
of the flower of manhood of almost every 
civilized nation. 

To fight and die on the battlefield is not so 
bad for a man. He can expect to be called to 
his nation's assistance at any time, but to fight 
a foe to whom neither child or age was sacred, 
and one that respected nothing it seemed, was 
like fighting against the very old Devil himself. 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 9 

Could he have conceived a worse type of fight- 
ing craft than the undersea boat that lurked 
beneath the waves ever ready to pounce and 
to strike at an undefended craft, regardless 
whether it be passenger or merchant ship, and 
then, having struck, to leave the few survivors 
to their fate on the ocean! That form of war- 
fare truly belonged in the Devil 's category. As 
if this was not enough, they must use another 
of his weapons, gas in all forms. 

I was heartily in favor of intervention long 
before the United States went into the war, but 
I see now that had my plans carried as I would 
liked to have been able to have put them 
through, there would have been not much more 
gained than is the case now, but there would 
have been more loss of American lives. 

Our boys are brave unto recklessness. They 
never stopped to count the cost, but are in war- 
fare as they are in all pursuits of life, strenu- 
ous and virile. If a job has to be done by 
someone and they are elected for it, they do 
not dilly-dally over what its final cost will be, 
but they pitch right in and get it over with dis- 
patch. Why live in trenches soaking in mud 
and reeking in filth, waiting for the Germans 
to advance and kill or maim them, when it 
would be far easier and over with quicker to 
go right out and meet the foe on common 
ground. Death, if it was to come, would meet 
them in the trench as on the highway. This 



10 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

is the sum and substance of the reasoning of 
the boys who went over in that big offensive 
that settled the war, and I give it in this con- 
densed form, although the stories I have heard 
from their spirit lips have been interesting in 
the extreme and varied as to detail, but I know 
that you will read the history of the great drive, 
and it would be but a waste of time for me to 
repeat their stories now, but I want to send 
their message to the waiting world. It is brief, 
but it conveys a world of meaning: 



" Mourn not for us who gave our lives in the 
great cause. We are not dead, nor do we sleep 
where poppies grow. We live and we do not 
regret our part in making the world a better 
place for mortals. We do not ask retribution 
for our lives, but we do ask that we shall be 
heard and we ask that justice should be done 
to those we fought and died for. Let men live 
as brothers in peace hereafter, and let our 
memories always stand as the beacon light. ' ' 

With united voices they gave me this mes- 
sage, and I send it along in their own words. 
You on earth can interpret it as you will. They 
are not bitter against their late foes, nor do 
they seem to seek revenge on anyone. By their 
asking justice they mean that what is just and 
no more should be required of the German 
nation. You must remember that it is the com- 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 11 

mon people, the hard working and the thrifty, 
that must in the end pay for all the mistakes 
and the treacheries of their former rulers. 
They did not ask for war, nor did they have 
voice in its making, but it was their own blood 
of their blood that was given, not freely, but 
demanded by the leaders of their country. 



CHAPTER III 

THE KAISER 

IF the indemnities that are to be asked of the 
Germans and their cohorts was to be taken 
toll of the Kaiser and his militant^advisers, then 
I, with the boys over here, in spirit land, would 
demand full indemnity with all interest, and 
by that word full, I mean full. The German 
people were but slaves under the rule of Kai- 
serism from the cradle to the grave. This doc- 
trine has always been instilled into their very 
lifeblood. Kaiser, country and loyalty to both 
— regardless of what it means in sacrifice. 

Take any people, and century after century 
let them have this, their creed, deep rooted and 
grooved and then what else could you expect 
but obedience in anything no matter what, as 
long as it was orders from Kaiser or country. 

-In what other nation could you see such blind 
obedience or such official arrogance? Where 
else in a so-called civilized nation are women 
held in the same light? The men in Germany 
have always, since time began, held their women 
as beneath them, almost as servants at their 
bid and call. The best and the finest must al- 
ways be reserved for the man. You can even 
notice this trait in many so-called German- 

12 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 13 

Americans born in their fatherland and who 
emigrated to freedom. It is as the word "Ver- 
botten," which means slavery. Even the off- 
spring of snch people are brought to these same 
old-country ideas. When a man enters the 
room you will notice the good housewife fidget 
and fuss — to please him is her only wish; and 
will he go out of his way to even as much as 
set a chair for her? No. That is beneath his 
dignity as a man of kultur. 

It is often said that the men of America treat 
their women with too much latitude, but on the 
whole are not the girls and women of America 
the finest all-around type in existence today? 
If you have a doubt on this subject, wait until 
the boys all get home. They can tell you the 
truth. They have had experiences with girls 
from blue-eyed, black-haired Irish lassies clear 
down the row to the fair-haired girls of Ger- 
many, and I will be willing to place a wager 
that few reached as near their ideals as the 
home lassies. 

SOLDIER GIELS 

Didn't the girls go over and stand up under 
strains hard enough to tax the strength of a 
strong, able man? Didn't they work under fire 
as near the front as they could get? Not be- 
cause they were sent there under orders, but 
because they volunteered to go to be near 
enough to bring succor and what little com- 



14 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

forts they could to the boys. Women of all 
stations in life, giving up ease and giving up 
comforts to go out in that hell, not under draft, 
but because their hearts told them that it was 
the logical thing to do when their countrymen 
needed them and their help. I tell you, it took 
more than mere love of adventure, more than 
real love of romance, to stand up under what 
those girls went through many times in the 
line of duty. Not only the girls of canteen 
service, but the loyal girls of the great Bed 
Cross band. Their noble work should be com- 
memorated as well as the boys whose work was 
so well and so quickly done. 



CHAPTER IV 

MONUMENTS 

SPEAKING on this subject I may as well add 
my views as to a proper and fitting way to 
commemorate the heroes and heroines of this 
great conflict. I think that the age of massive 
and expensive brass and marble monuments is 
past. To my mind the enormous sums that go 
into the building and the setting up of these 
beautiful, but rather useless, symbols, would 
be spent far more wisely and to far better ad- 
vantage if it were put into public buildings and 
let them stand as memorial halls. By public 
buildings as memorials I do not mean a sort 
of mausoleums, but rather auditoriums wherein 
relics of the local men of the city or town can 
be kept and where all may gather for recrea- 
tion. And then, too, would not the memory of 
those who fell be kept green if, say, once or 
twice a year services of some kind could be 
held in this memorial in their name! How 
many people stop to consider just what the 
average monument really signifies after the 
unveiling is over? True, they stand majestic 
and beautiful as works of art, adorning some 
park, square or other public site, but does the 
average person gaze at it over a dozen times? 

15 



16 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

And really, now, in your own mind, do yon 
think that monuments of that sort really keep 
alive the memory of those for whom they are 
erected? 

All this leads to another end that I wish to 
speak of, and that is the question that will arise 
in regard to a suitable memorial to my honor. 
My views as just expressed hold good in this 
case also. I do not feel that I am trying to 
anticipate, when I make mention of memorials 
in my name, because I know that this will be 
the natural sequence to my passing, and I wish 
that my ideas on this subject could be carried 
out wherever money is appropriated for that 
purpose. I would rather have one such place 
dedicated to my memory than to have fifty 
monuments set out for me. And another thing 
apropos is that I do not favor the many dif- 
ferent suggestions that the map of the United 
States be altered as to names, already grown 
familiar to the people, should be changed in 
my regard. It is to my mind ridiculous in the 
extreme. I do not wish to disparage those who 
are acting in all good faith to commemorate 
me, but there are so many, many other ways 
that this can be done and not cause as much 
confusion as would result in case localities and 
age-old names of places were to be changed 
in my favor. I myself, were I an occupant of 
the chair, would veto any such bill as came 
within my jurisdiction. 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 17 

PENSIONS 

Another subject that I can safely add as com- 
ing nnder this same head, and of which I am 
not in accord, is the precedent established in 
setting aside a yearly pension of $5,000 to my 
widow. The sum involved was not necessary 
to her maintenance, and even had it been, it 
wonld have been the proper conrse to have kept 
this dangerous precedent ont of legislative 
channels, and to have raised this sum through 
other means. 

The man responsible for the introduction of 
this measure did so in all good faith, and the 
associates with him in voting this through with- 
out dissenting voice, did so in the same good 
faith, and even against the little lurking finger 
of conscience that seemed to point against this 
measure as one in which they should have had 
no say. To my way of thinking this should 
have been left entirely to the discretion of the 
people. 

I was not holding office in any way, manner 
or form at the time of my demise. My family 
was left in fairly good circumstances, and my 
death deprived them of nothing in the way of 
support. The question brought up as to the 
precedent established in the cases of several 
other President's wives left widows would not 
hold good in my case, as I was not holding 
office. 



18 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

In a case of this kind where public money is 
involved too much care cannot be exercised as 
to its expenditure. This is all I will say on the 
subject, else I might arouse the ire of those to 
whom I should feel indebted. 



CHAPTER V 

THE PACKEKS 

THE probe of the packing interests as now 
going on is commendable. It was high time 
that this great industry, involving as it does 
millions in money and practically the entire 
control of the meat situation of the country at 
large, should really be under government con- 
trol, providing that this can be done without 
exorbitant expenditure, or hold-up. There is 
much hidden evidence that must be unearthed, 
and when the probe really gets under the skin 
you will notice some great squirming on the 
part of the magnates in control. 

If this war was fought to bring about justice 
to all people, why then should justice not start 
at home? Why allow a selected few to control 
the vital necessities of life and to demand 
exorbitant profits for that commodity which 
happens to be under their control, necessary as 
it may be to the life of the people! 

MARKET GAMBLING 

No man should be allowed to gamble or to 
control the market price of any common neces- 
sity of life, be it food or be it clothing, and all 
those convicted of such an offense should be 

19 



20 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

tried before a tribunal of the common people 
who have had to pay their prices and let these 
victims pass sentence. Why should a man wax 
rich on another's labor? Why should he live 
in ease and luxury while another toils to raise 
stock and grain on which more often or not the 
farmer loses while the man in control of the 
markets manipulates the prices through some 
gambling exchange? It is not fair, nor is it 
just. Let the government step in and be the 
controlling power in all commodities. Then 
can the poor man receive as fair treatment as 
the rich. 

NEW IDEALS 

I know that I am not following out my earthly 
ideas, or expressions, in many of the remarks 
I will make in the course of my talks through 
this medium, but with death and cessation of 
earthly strife, my eyes have grown clearer, my 
vision has grown stronger. I now see both 
sides of the questions under discussion, and can 
judge accordingly, and so when I advocate gov- 
ernment control in all things pertaining to the 
common necessities of life to allow of the 
poorest of mortals receiving the same treatment 
as the highest, I feel that I am on the right 
track at last. The packers are no worse in 
their business dealings than are countless other 
concerns dealing in other lines. All are gam- 
blers more or less, and the common people lose 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 21 

out in the end. But I have shown my policies 
while on earth in dealing with the so-called 
trusts, and while I supposedly dispersed them 
they exist almost as strong as ever, but not 
in as brazen an outward manner. I can see 
what is needed stronger than ever to clear the 
markets of muck. 

SOCIALISM 

I do not wish to propagate socialism, or any 
of its kindred creeds. That would be like plant- 
ing a field of grain, watching it grow until it 
headed and was ready to reap, and then in a 
moment of madness setting torch and devastat- 
ing the field. 

GOVERNMENT REFORM 

There is no need of vast government reform. 
The United States has a system that calls for 
no great modification. It is in dealing with 
corporations that changes and reforms must 
come. 

THE PRESIDENT 

If the head of the government is a man of 
honest worth, then very little of false and dis- 
honest legislative acts will pass and be sanc- 
tioned. He has the power to veto all measures 
that come up before they are made laws, but 
no one man can probe all things to his entire 
satisfaction in the short time allowed before 
signing. 



22 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

THIRD TERM 

In my opinion when a man is elected to the 
office of President he should be retained as 
long as he gives entire satisfaction to the public 
and their interests. He should not be harassed 
by a short term of four, or even eight years, 
in office. Often it takes practically the entire 
first term for a man to understand the situa- 
tions thoroughly that are under his jurisdiction, 
and just as he is getting down to real under- 
standing and to the real business of govern- 
ment supervision he needs must go on a can- 
vassing campaigning tour that breaks into his 
routine and must have his mind on political 
business. 

No man can do full justice to his office un- 
less his mind is undivided, and many hesitate 
to start reforms for political party reasons, 
fearing to hurt their interests in another cam- 
paign, or if in their last tenure of office would 
hesitate on vital questions because time would 
not allow of their completion, and fear that 
their successor would either resent the work 
left for him to finish, or more often would 
bungle the job. For that reason I would ad- 
vocate, along with other broken precedents, that 
one more at least be added, that of retaining in 
office for indefinite periods, subject to recall, 
any President, regardless of party, who can, 
and does, prove himself the fit man for the 
office. 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 23 

PRESIDENT WILSON 

No more honest or higher principled man ever 
sat in the presidential chair than he who oc- 
cupies it now. He is a great student, and as 
such is not given to voicing his opinions, or 
airing his plans to the public eye until he is 
ready for their consummation, and it is this 
trait, while commendable in many ways, that 
causes people of America more used to airing 
their opinions to misunderstand him and his 
motives. But on the other hand, they are be- 
ginning to see his true worth. 

He elected to cross the ocean to defend his 
policies amid bitter denunciations on the part 
of myself and many others, but time has shown 
the great need of his presence at the prelimi- 
nary conference for peace. 

When he returns to his duties at the White 
House he will take up the routine of business 
where he dropped it, and questions that are now 
at issue will be solved in all good time and with 
careful consideration. That is one thing in 
his favor. He never jumps into anything hap- 
hazardly, but only acts after careful study of 
all sides and all possibilities of every question 
that is brought up. 



I 



CHAPTER VI 

BOLSHEVISM 

T will take a man of clear outlook and calm 
judgment in the office for the next few years 
at least. There is trouble ahead, I can see it 
fomenting even now. A spread of Bolshevism 
is about to strike the country at large. High 
wages and plenty of work, both for skilled and 
unskilled labor, has brought about this condi- 
tion, and when wages begin to recede again, 
which is inevitable, the greatest riots will come 
throughout different sections of the country. 
I do not look for as bad a state of affairs 
throughout the Middle West as will be in both 
the eastern and western coast states, especially 
throughout the western states, where it seems 
that the I. W. W. element has greater control. 
Troops will have to be kept in readiness to 
quell the riots and restore order out of chaos, 
but I look to see blood shed before order will 
be restored. 

OEGANIZED LABOE 

Organized labor, if under the right leader- 
ship, and if it recognizes laws of the Union as 
to peace and order, and does not make demands 
that are at times entirely too drastic to con- 
template, is a good thing for the masses, to pro- 

24 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 25 

tect them from too much capitalism, but when 
organized labor can, and does, tie up an entire 
city or state, paralyzing its industries and put- 
ting the inhabitants at the mercy of their whims, 
it is time that something drastic was done to 
curb this power. It is as a dangerous mad dog 
loosed in a crowded thoroughfare, no one can 
tell where it will spring nor how deep its bite 
will be. 

If such a condition was brought about with 
a good excuse behind it, as a demand for fair 
treatment, or a living scale of wages, I would 
not say a word, but when men organized to- 
gether in the name of labor will go out on a 
strike or demand, in sympathy with other 
strikers who are demanding, not a living wage, 
but an exorbitant salary, then I, who have 
always championed the workers, have nothing 
but contempt for their methods and would like 
nothing better than to see them shut out en- 
tirely and their places filled with returning 
soldiers who fought their fights over there in 
France, while these men were drawing salaries 
far and above any that they had ever drawn 
before. 

There will be plenty of the boys glad to ac- 
cept these same disputed positions and willing 
to take up the work at the granted scale, so be 
careful, you men of organized labor, that you 
are not superseded by others while you parade 
and argue. 



26 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

Eemember one thing, that the government of 
the United States is beginning to have a finger 
in every pie, and if it sees that all is not as it 
should be, there is power to make it right. You 
have had a square deal, as near as could be on 
short notice. 

You promised to abide by the decision until 
such a day as real adjustments could be had. 
This promise was made, not to a private owner, 
or to a man in civil life, but was made to the 
government agents, and I tell you, men, that it 
is a risky thing to break faith with your gov- 
ernment. 

Eemember that peace is not here yet. The 
United States is still at war virtually, and will 
be until the peace negotiations are completed 
and practical peace is declared. What has all 
of this to do with your case you will perhaps 
wonder. Well, while you have idle time on 
your hands, you can figure this out for yourself. 

Eemember, your President may be on foreign 
shores, trying his best to make the world see 
that all should live in harmony, and is it just 
or right for you to go against these very prin- 
ciples at a time like the present? If he can 
get the world, that has more to complain of 
now than you ever could have, to see his way 
of thinking, do you think that he will let you 
do as you please in this land that he feels re- 
sponsible for? 

Get together on a fair basis, and let your 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 27 

differences be settled by arbitration and at the 
right time. Be Americans now and stand by 
yonr country. Don't let ideas that were fo- 
mented across the ocean in the most illiterate 
country in Europe be the slogans of your class. 
See what is being done in Eussia today. Do 
you want to see the same condition in your 
land? If your answer is yes, then may God see 
to it, if the government can't, that every man 
voting aye to this question be exiled to Eussia 
for the rest of his natural life. 



CHAPTEE VII 

EETUBNING HEEOES 

ALL hail to the returning heroes! Let joy 
- be uneonfined. But one thing to remember, 
don't pour out all your enthusiasm and wel- 
comes on the first units returning and give them 
all the best that you have in hospitality and 
in choicest positions in civil work, but remem- 
ber that many of the boys who did the actual 
fighting and endured the hardships of the war 
are still over there and will be for some little 
time. They, too, will want some of your cheer- 
ing and some of your welcome on their return, 
so I say, give freely, but keep a reserve stock 
fresh, too. 

The boys that have been kept as an army of 
occupation will not want to come home and 
find that the uniform is out of date, as far as 
welcome and opening to a livelihood is con- 
cerned ; and, girls, remember that the boys will 
be hungry for the sight of your bright faces 
and the sound of your loving voices ; and men, 
you who have had the great privilege of wear- 
ing the uniform of your country, see that it 
is as unsullied when you return it as it was on 
the day you first donned it. If not for the 
sake of your own manhood's honor, then for 

28 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 29 

the sake of the boys who still wear it over there. 

You who have returned home can do much 
in keeping alive patriotism in the hearts of 
all if you will but try. You have been under 
discipline, most of you, long enough to realize 
that it is, and was, practically the means of 
making you stronger in every sense of the word, 
mentally, physically, and I trust spiritually. If 
it has not done these three things for you, then 
the service has been a failure in your case, and 
it will do little good for me to plead with you 
on a moral ground. 

One of the first things that the returning 
soldier thinks about seems to be to establish a 
home for himself. He has seen the love of the 
European peasants for their homes, and being 
removed far from his own kin and friends his 
thoughts naturally turn to home and his return 
there. The aftermath of the two facts, com- 
bined to make one whole, is the decision to 
settle down and found a home and rear a family 
on his return. This is commendable, as the 
homes are the foundation stones of a country. 

JUSTICE 

The boys returning should all be assured of 
means and ways to establish homes, and should 
be offered positions that will pay them a living 
wage. This is the fundamental duty of the 
government, and Congress would spend its time 
wisely in framing such a measure before it is 



30 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

antedated by the boys getting discouraged over 
the prospects that they see and becoming dis- 
satisfied with conditions as they exist and forc- 
ing an issue by other less commendable means. 
The government conscripted most of her army 
from civilian life, taking the boys from posi- 
tions that some of them had spent years in 
acquiring, and if the men for whom they worked 
do not feel justified by service in their country's 
name to find them another position equal to 
the one they left, if not able to give them the 
same places, I feel that the government should, 
and eventually must, take a hand in settling this 
question. 

SERVICE FLAGS 

It was easy enough to hang out a service 
flag filled with blue stars. It was not so easy 
to add a silver or golden one as conditions and 
fate demanded. With flags floating on high 
and the senses stirred to highest pitch by flashes 
of news from the front, it was easy enough to 
be patriotic and make promises to the boys leav- 
ing for war, but with that incentive gone, and 
life once more assuming a near normal phase, 
it is a trifle embarrassing for some to be called 
on to make good these promises. 

UNREDEEMED PROMISES 

To the soldier these unredeemed promises 
are one of the bitterest pills to swallow. He 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 31 

comes back with a feeling that the patriotism 
shown at his departure will not be dimmed on 
his return. In fact, he justly feels a bit exalted 
over his great experience in being one of the 
fighters, and others should look upon him as 
a little out of the ordinary, but when the reality 
strikes him you can imagine what effect it has, 
like ice water thrown over one. He loses that 
which he can never feel again, no matter how 
long his life may be. Let him have his little 
triumphs while he may. He has earned them. 
Instead of damping his ardors, cheer him along, 
and for the sake of the youth you have left 
behind, find something in your establishment 
that he will not be ashamed to work at while 
still glorified, and something that you will not 
blush to offer. 

THE SAILOR 

I give this little talk under heading of soldier 
heroes, but I have not forgotten that there are 
others just as deserving of your praise and 
patriotism — the boys in blue of the navy. They, 
too, did their share, and often more in winning 
the war. They, too, deserve the best that can 
be had when their country no longer needs 
them. They, too, will be founding homes on 
shore and rearing families. There will be thou- 
sands of such releases in the next year, and all 
should be provided with positions upon their 
discharge. That will help keep loyalty for their 



32 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

government imbedded in their hearts as nothing 
else would, the very fact that their country 
was looking after their welfare even after it 
was through with them as fighting units. 
Enough cannot be said, or done, for them to 
help make them self-respecting citizens instead 
of dissatisfied citizens. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE EED CEOSS 

I WANT to speak of the great work accom- 
plished by the Red Cross, both before and 
after the entry of the United States into the 
war. It is the one civil organization that has 
my entire approval in all of its different phases 
of relief throughout the war, and I am glad 
that the American people were so generous in 
their contributions to this great working band 
that there is left on hand quite a surplus of 
cash beyond present needs, but I deplore the 
little petty jealousies that have sprung up be- 
tween the smaller chapters over surplus funds 
in the treasury. Each seems afraid that if the 
money is left with the different chapters that 
it will eventually become too much of a tempta- 
tion and be spent unwisely where not needed. 
My idea of the proper thing to do with this 
surplus on hand is to turn it over to the national 
chapter headquarters and have it accounted for 
in the proper manner, and then when need arises 
for money it can easily be requisitioned from 
headquarters and properly checked and ac- 
counted for. This is public money, subscribed 
by the people for mercy work, and must be 

33 



34 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

used for that purpose, and it will be needed 
before the end of relief work comes. 

The Red Cross has under its wings, we might 
say, many different units, but all forming part 
of a great movement for the work of succor 
and help. 

The nurses' unit, while standing out as one 
of the foremost works of the organization, is 
really but an infinitesimal part played in this 
war. The soldiers and the civilian population 
of the stricken country as well, look to the Red 
Cross as to a savior, for help and for sus- 
tenance. 

This great organization worked as one with 
the government, supplying everything from a 
tack to a fully equipped hospital unit on a 
moment's notice, one might say. They saved 
more lives through their work among the 
civilian population than were taken toll by the 
war. 

Like angels and saviors the workers would 
appear in a devastated region, supplying food, 
clothing and even housing and refurbishing 
what could be salvaged on the spot in the way 
of household supplies and utensils, transpor- 
tation being their one great difficulty in the 
shell-torn regions. 

The front lines held no terrors for the brave 
workers, and even the women would venture 
as near danger as the military orders would 
allow, to bring help and comfort to the boys 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 35 

in sore need of all comforts. The workers often 
went without sleep for hours at a stretch, stood 
on their feet until they were ready to drop 
from sheer exhaustion, and when opportunity 
came for a brief rest, often they would hesi- 
tate to remove their shoes from feet so swollen 
from the unaccustomed strain for fear that 
they would not be able to put their shoes on 
again in the time alloted them. 

Sleep, that was the greatest need in many 
cases, but when under the pressure of work it 
was the last thing thought of, and I am sure 
that on the day the armistice was signed, and 
after the news was verified, that the only silence 
on the front lines was not the silence of the 
great and lesser guns, but the silence of sleep, 
heavy, deep slumber of exhaustion, that only 
the work-weary can know. 

The women of America who were not given the 
opportunity to go over and help did noble work 
in the cause, both at home and in the work- 
rooms of the organization chapters, and it was 
mainly due to their efforts that so much was 
accomplished in so short a time. They were as 
truly doing their share, those who were loyal, 
as the workers in actual service. Many a soldier 
and sailor blessed the kind heart of her whose 
busy fingers fashioned his warm and serviceable 
extra garments of wool, and many a surgeon 
working at high speed among the wounded, 
blessed the careful fingers that had made band- 



36 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

age and pad, and many a soldier lad blessed the 
hospital garments that kept him in comfort and 
cleanliness. I know this to be the trnth. 

I have talked to spirits of all classes, soldiers, 
sailors, snrgeons and nurses, and they all had 
the same story to tell of the goodness and mercy 
of the Eed Cross. When an organization of 
snch magnitude can carry on for years and 
handle in the meantime millions of dollars worth 
of supplies, subscribed by the people, and can 
come through it all clean, it is worthy of much 
praise, yes, even of praise from the land of 
spirit life. Eest assured that the flag of white, 
with its emblem of red, will always be received 
with reverence by the people of Europe. They 
know what that banner stands for in their lives, 
and in a way that I hope the people of America 
will never see. 

The Red Gross should be made a permanent 
government order, supported by popular sub- 
scription, but under supervision of government 
auditors. That would do much to keep its fair 
name unsullied, in fact, that is what should 
have been done in the first place with all or- 
ganised civil relief. If the government had 
supervised the accounts of all organizations 
soliciting public funds on behalf of war work, 
there would have been no aftermath, no muck 
through which to delve, no dissatisfaction on 
the part of those to whom the relief and com- 
forts were to be brought, no shifting of re- 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 37 

sponsibility from shoulder to shoulder. This 
condition of affairs has done much to offset the 
benefits and has done much moral harm, but 
I hope that a great lesson will have been learned 
if ever the need should arise again for such 
work. It is deplorable that incidents of this 
kind should have had to mar the Godliness of 
the mercy work of the war, but enough on this 
subject. 



CHAPTER IX 

SUBSCRIPTIONS 

O PEAKING of public moneys collected 
^ through popular subscription, it seems now 
that a start has been made in this direction, and 
it is becoming overwhelming; where before a 
hundred thousand dollars was considered an 
enormous sum to raise, now from one to a hun- 
dred millions are being asked for different pur- 
poses, and when solicited from men in the busi- 
ness and political world it is usually forth- 
coming, because the men so solicited feel that 
it is right and in a good cause, and because 
they know it is their bounden duty to give. 

QUOTAS 

Now in my opinion a great many of these 
begging pleas are not worthy of support, and 
should be carefully looked into by a committee 
capable of judging. This business of anybody 
and everybody setting a certain quota on cities 
and localities and then almost demanding its 
fulfillment by threat, or begging plea, is getting 
to be too much of a fad. If money is needed 
for food and clothing in towns and localities, 
let the city or state appropriate a certain sum 
to be used for relief, and then appoint agents 

38 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 39 

to render that relief where it is needed, and 
the sums expended be accounted for to the state 
in itemized statements. Then if the sums 
needed are in excess of the money on hand in 
the treasury, let special taxes be levied on all 
to pay for this. In that way each can pay his 
or her mite and no special one will be burdened 
with excessive call for donation. 

I speak not from hearsay, but from actual ex- 
perience, when I say that a man of any public 
position is almost hounded into insanity through 
committees soliciting funds or selling tickets to 
different benefits, bazaars and charities, and if 
the sum solicited only amounts to a dollar or 
five each time, there are so many calls that at 
the end of a year a big inroad has been made 
into private funds, and you have no record of 
how or where it went. 

CHURCHES 

Churches are supported almost entirely by 
contributions and moneys derived from bazaars 
and benefits. Often in localities that are scarce 
able to support one church properly, you will 
find three, four or five struggling along trying 
to exist, and the pastors scarce knowing where 
the next week's income is to come from. 

Now, in my opinion, even though there be a 
diversity in matter of creed, why try and keep 
up several houses of worship in this manner 
when if all the contributions and all of the 



40 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

support of the community were given to one 
house of worship in which all might congregate 
and receive the faith, much more could be ac- 
complished ' and the minister kept in a self- 
respecting style of living, where he could give 
his best to the congregations. 

The only practical difference in the creeds 
is, after all, in the names. All are seeking God 
and all are seeking salvation in the name of 
His Son, and how better to seek this than to 
make a right beginning on earth and banish 
jealousies and little petty differences in reli- 
gious forms, and form one great brotherhood of 
united creeds under the banner of God. 

There is little true Christianity in assailing 
another of different creed just because your 
way to heaven is not the way of the other. 
There is only one God, and you all seek Him. 

GOD 

There is only one road to find Him, and that 
I find is not the road through Protestant or 
Catholic or Jewish creed, but it is through the 
road of your heart and on the truths found there 
are based your hopes of salvation. 

JUDGMENT 

What matters it if you are the elder, or 
leader, in all affairs of your church on earth 
if your heart is not in accord with God your 
standing in the church affairs will avail you 
nothing. God does not search the records of 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 41 

the churches to find out who is the largest con- 
tributor to its funds, or just who is the leader 
in all of its activities when He seeks to judge 
His people, but He looks deep into their hearts 
as they come home to Him in their nakedness, 
and there He can read the record of a life well 
spent in His service of love, or mis-spent in 
the service of hate. 

NEAE DEATH 

The boys in the trenches in France and Bel- 
gium found that it made little difference 
whether their trenchmates were of their same 
faith or not. With death at their very side 
throughout the days and nights, they came to 
understand each other fully and found that 
after all, in spite of nationality, creed or tongue, 
that all were brothers and of a kin. 

Death clears the sight and widens the vision. 
To have death for a, companion for days at a 
time does wonders in re-making a man, espe- 
cially if he has breathing spells in which to 
think over the affairs of the past. It broadens 
the outlook and widens the narrow mind. 

You will find the change of attitude towards 
creeds in most of the returning soldiers and 
sailors. They will never again tolerate preju- 
dice against another because of religious dif- 
ferences, and if all the world could be brought 
to this same state of mind, there would be little 
need of peace parleys or armament, as religion 



42 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

has much to do with war. Why, I have seen 
whole communities split and neighbors at war 
with each other over different views on the sub- 
ject of religion, and that is why I advocate one 
church, one God and one faith for all, to bring 
peace among neighbors and love to the hearts 

Of all. UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD 

I would heartily support, with what support 
I am capable of giving now, any plan for rais- 
ing money by subscription if it was to be used 
to establish universal brotherhood churches, or 
halls of worship, but any plan to individualize 
any one creed, or faith, will not even receive my 
tolerance. 

While the world is in the turmoil of recon- 
struction and is trying to get back to a normal 
civil basis, why harass and plague with de- 
mands for money that the people of all classes 
can little afford to give? 

Living expenses have been high, and while 
wages have soared along on wings, it has taken 
practically all that a man of family could earn 
to keep that same family in the common com- 
forts of life, and few have been able to lay aside 
the customary bit for a rainy day, but Amer- 
icans are easily played upon and often will give 
when they least can afford to, from sense of 
duty, and as I said before, while not in the same 
words, perhaps, but with the same meaning, 
lay off and give the great American public a 
breathing spell. 



CHAPTER X 

WAGE EARNERS 

YOU wage earners of the strong sex, are you 
doing justice to yourself and your em- 
ployer? Are you earning the money you find 
in your pay envelope, or is your work so slackly 
done that in taking your wage when tendered 
you are in reality robbing him? Are you a 
loafer or are you a man? Stop and consider 
this. Take stock of yourself if you never have 
before, and see if you are really worth your salt, 
or worth more than your present salary. If 
you are of the latter type and have uncon- 
sciously gotten into a rut, get out of it and 
make yourself. 

If there ever was one thing on earth I de- 
spised, it was a worthless man cluttering up 
the highways and eating food that belonged to 
men of worth. Give the best that is in you to 
those who pay for your time. Don't try to 
earn your money, and no more ; that is not the 
road to advancement and to success. Did you 
ever see a man who amounted to a can of beans 
whose time was spent in watching the hands of 
the clock for fear he would give a minute or 
two of his precious, invaluable time to his em- 
ployer without extra pay? 

43 



44 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

You may not think that the little attentions 
given to your work are noticed, and that de- 
tails that to you seem very unimportant and 
overlooked in your work to save bother are not 
noticed. A really efficient man, one who gives 
full value in time and energy and thought to 
the interests of his employer, seldom has to 
make demands for increased salary or to whine 
over fair treatment in regard to promotions. 
He usually finds, unless in rare cases where he 
might have a jealous, spiteful man over him in 
influence, his work has counted for something 
after all. Employers are not blind to man 
value, and are always ready to do their best in 
encouraging standards. 

HIGHEK EDUCATION 

Education is a great help, but it is not such 
a great factor in the business world as is sup- 
posed, nor in other work, as many of the most 
successful men were not even high school grad- 
uates. School or college cannot make a man out 
of you if you have not the making of a man in 
you. They but give you the rudiments of your 
education, the main part coming after your 
graduation into the college of experiences. 
There is where you will either stand or fall, 
and a great many fall who have the power to 
stand if they would but try. 

Don't look for a soft snap. You will find 
that the soft places do not always lead into a 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 45 

future, and often are the cause of man's down- 
fall. Men are so constituted by God that they 
must have an outlet for their energy. His orig- 
inal plan was for man to use this in gaining 
himself a livelihood through physical labor, but 
as civilization became more pronounced soft 
snaps became more plentiful, and found plenty 
of seekers. They, too, had energy stored up 
in their soft bodies that must find outlet, and 
often it will be used to the damnation of body 
and soul. 

IDLENESS 

When idleness lies heavy on a man's con- 
science it denotes manhood lies within, but 
when a man revels in idleness it shows a sore 
lack of manhood. There is deviltry at hand 
that the idle seldom fails to find, while the busy 
man has no time to see it. If your brain works 
along with your hands, you will get somewhere, 
but if your hands work alone you will always 
remain just where you are. 

IDEALS 

A good plan for a young man starting out in 
life is to set himself an object and strive always 
to reach that object. A good successful man's 
career should be studied through all its phases 
and followed to the best of one's ability. In 
having some certain goal for which to strive, 
a man will make greater strides to successful 



46 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

attainment, as life then will be like running a 
race with a determination to win in the end. 
Be thoughtful, courteous, and above all, keep 
your brains and your hands working together 
for the good of all. 



CHAPTER XI 

SUFFKAGETTES 

THE suffrage question, I notice, is still un- 
settled. The Senate does not seem to take 
kindly to the measure. The women backing this 
bill should know that one thing causing this un- 
favorable attitude on the part of the lawmakers 
is the actions of the women in trying to force 
the issue. Militant tactics go against the grain 
of any red-blooded American man, and I think 
I am in the right when I say that the deciding 
votes were cast by men of that caliber. 

IN WASHINGTON, D. C. 

The women who have been doing picket duty 
around the White House in Washington have 
really done more harm to the cause than can 
be rectified in years. They are not good types 
of modern suffragettes, but belong to the mili- 
tant class of women who like to draw public 
notice to themselves, and think it an honor to 
have their pictures published in the yellow 
papers of the country showing them in war- 
like attitudes, either fighting a squad of police 
surrounded by a howling mob or being taken 
by force to a cell. No wonder that the men 
representing the country's best interests hesi- 
tate to grant them equal rights. 

47 



48 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

A lady can and should act her part as a lady, 
no matter what she is seeking for, or where, 
and the suffrage party will be wise in heeding 
my advice to do away with this form and type 
of advertisement, for that is really what these 
women are, an advertisement, but of the wrong 
kind. 

IN PAKIS 

The very idea of planning to send delegates 
to Paris to picket. Why harass the President 
of the United States and make both his position 
and the women of the United States ridiculous 
in the eyes of the world? The women who were 
prevented from crossing to do this very thing 
should thank the government for preventing 
them from carrying out their plans. 

EQUALITY 

I believe that women, as a whole, are equal 
in mentality, if not in strength, to the men of 
the world, and should have equal rights with 
men in all things, and the time is coming when 
this will be true in fact, as well as fancy, but I 
have no patience with fool women who try, as I 
say, to gain notoriety and who defeat the aims 
of their party through their acts. 

A woman is capable, to my mind, of voting 
and holding office as well, if not better in many 
cases, than the men voting and filling office now. 
They have keener instincts, clearer insights and 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 49 

perceptions into things that men often blunder 
at, and are less subtle in using their powers in 
an unlawful way, but on the other hand they 
seem to have less of the strength of purpose 
needed to handle public affairs. 

WIFE IN OFFICE 

If it were not for the eternal sex problem, a 
good plan would be to elect two officials to the 
same office, where that office is one of impor- 
tance, and have the officials each of the opposite 
sex. Then by combining the two qualities of 
the two brains and strength I think that an 
ideal medium would be reached. 

Men that have proved themselves to be suc- 
cessful in business and political life, more often 
than not, have a wife at home whose influence 
is a big factor in that success, though the man 
and the woman may be unconscious of this fact. 

THE OTHER SIDE 

A man can go far if his wife is of the right 
sort, but on the other hand, a woman, be she 
of the wrong kind, can pull a man down to 
the gutter from most any station in life. I 
wonder if the women of the land realize what 
a big part they play in a man's life, and in his 
successes or failures. If they did realize this 
fact fully, they would also realize the fact that 
they have little need of asking suffrage except 
to give them equal rights in holding property 



50 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

and in legal matters, but as far as voting and 
handling the affairs of the nation is concerned, 
she can do that readily enough through her hus- 
band. But let me give you a hint of advice, 
don't let him know what you are doing through 
him. 

There is no cause for undue wailing on the 
part of the suffragette party leaders about dis- 
honor in connection with the defeat of the 
measure. There was no desire on the part of 
any member of Congress to dishonor the women 
of the nation; on the contrary, it was to save 
their honor that they voted as they did. Time 
will show that I am right in saying this, as 
women are not ready to enter the same field 
with men, and the war, instead of being the 
means of franchising women has been the means 
of delaying the franchise. This reconstruction 
period is not the logical time to introduce new 
forms, or is it the time to allow women the 
ballot through which they can overthrow old 
forms. When life again assumes a normal 
standard, then it will be safe to pass this 
measure, but in the meantime if you women 
want to gain the good will, and erstwhile the 
votes, cut out the theatricals at Washington. 



CHAPTER XII 

CHILD LABOE 

THE child labor laws should be modified to 
a certain degree and made to conform with 
conditions in different parts of the Union. 
While rigid laws mnst be applied to certain 
sections, especially in the mill and factory in- 
fested districts, there can be more laxity shown 
in other sections where conditions warrant. 

In my opinion strict measures should be en- 
forced against allowing children under the age of 
fourteen working during school periods, except 
on given holidays and on the Saturday of the 
week, except in the case of trifling outdoor work, 
such as delivering and paper carrying, which 
work is really more helpful to the average boy 
than doing nothing; but on the other hand, the 
long summer vacation, usually extending as it 
does over a period of ninety days or more, 
should not be spent by the children in idleness, 
and the law should take this into consideration : 
That an average normal healthy child from 
the twelfth year and upward is better off work- 
ing at some suitable task in which they can earn 
part of the money required to clothe them dur- 
ing the school term than in idling away the 

51 



52 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

vacation months doing nothing. Teach them 
to seek outside employment for wage. 

CHILD HELP 

The average home that can be conducted dur- 
ing the school period without the aid of a child 
of the stated age can do as well in the summer 
months, when the work is lighter in most ways, 
and the small wage brought home by the child 
would go far towards lightening the usually 
heavily burdened family pocketbook, or in the 
case where the money question is not so press- 
ing, it would be the means of teaching a child 
the value of money that is self -earned, and this 
lesson is never so well taught as when it can 
be instilled into the mind of a child at an early 
age. 

Work, as the word is interpreted today in the 
average American city, where hours are regu- 
lated, is not a hardship on a child of average 
health, but rather a benefit. Idleness only be- 
gets mischief, and mischief often begets early 
crime. 

In the mill states and states where factories 
flourish, children should also be allowed to work, 
but strict measures should be enforced in regard 
to hours and conditions surrounding them while 
at work. In the average mill town a child can 
find more to their detriment, morally, if allowed 
to run the streets during the vacation period 
that will in the end be a greater sin against 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 53 

their lives than would any work that they were 
allowed to do. 

Give the children a fair chance to grow up 
into healthy, right-minded people by making 
conditions right for them through childhood, 
but in doing this do not take away their privi- 
leges of learning self-sustenance and self- 
reliance. A child that is allowed to idle under 
existing laws until reaching the age of fourteen 
or sixteen will not make as good and worthy 
citizen in the end as the child allowed the 
privilege. 

MOKE LIGHT 

While I know that this message I give is con- 
trary to my talks on this subject while on earth, 
I can see that I, too, was often mistaken in 
some of my ideas, and it is with the wish to 
rectify as far as possible that I give this book 
touching on the different questions of physical 
life, and if its mission is but partly accomplished 
I will feel well repaid. But to the subject in 
hand again. 

I feel that many who are capable of judging 
this subject rightly will be in accord with me 
when I say keep the child hands and brain 
working together at some suitable task and the 
future of that child will be assured, but allow 
the child hands and brain to find their own 
tasks and you will some day see that the course 
was wrong. In speaking of work I am includ- 



54 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

ing the girls as well as the boys, as they need 
the education and the benefits to be derived 
through it, as well as do the boys, if we are to 
expect women of worth when they have reached 
womanhood. 

UNIFORM DRESS 

It is a deplorable fact, but many children are 
hindered in their education through the ques- 
tion of clothes. In speaking thus I am not talk- 
ing of young ladies and young men, but of chil- 
dren of average school age, and deals more 
with girls than with the boys. Many will say 
this is a free country and no regulation in 
regard to dress should be asked or demanded, 
but, truth to tell, there is as much need for regu- 
lation in this regard as there is need of regula- 
tion in regard to child labor. 

When children in every grade, from primary 
to graduating class of the high schools of the 
country, have the question of clothes first in 
their minds, to the detriment of studies, it is 
high time that regulation should come ; and when 
girls of tender age, scarce graduated out of the 
nursery, don peek-a-boo waists and silk hosiery 
and add rouge and powder in an effort to attract 
the masculine classmates' favorable notice, 
they shun the less fortunate classmates whose 
family cannot afford to dress them in frills, 
or whose parents are of the common-sense type 
and object to this immodesty of dress. I say, 
it is time for regulation, and if all of the public 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 55 

schools of the country would follow the lead 
set by many private schools of requiring the 
pupils attending to wear a regulation uniform 
of plain but modish cut, it would do much; in 
fact, I believe I am right in saying that it would 
almost entirely eliminate the sex problem from 
out the graded schools, and you must admit that 
there is such a problem in our schools today, 
especially in our high schools. Mothers may 
stand aghast at this assertion in regard to chil- 
dren attending the schools, but close inquiry 
will bring an affirmation. 

HEALTH 

How to keep free from disease. This is vital 
and is as much to be included in the education 
of a boy through every school year of his life 
as is reading, writing or arithmetic. Yes, more 
important than any of the other studies, and 
anyone reading the reports of the examining 
boards delegated to examine physically the 
draftees conscripted for the great war will see 
that I am right in declaring this a necessary 
adjunct to education. Parents neglect this vital 
question to the detriment of the health and 
future welfare of their children, and so if the 
nation is to be free from the awful curse of the 
black plague, it must be taught to the growing 
child through educational paths, and we must 
not rely on the parent to give this the atten- 
tion it so earnestly needs. 



56 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

COMKADESHIP 

If the boys were taught all that this great 
question implies, there would be little need to 
devote so much thought to ways and means of 
safeguarding our girls from harm, and there 
could be more general comradeship between the 
sexes when they reached the proper ages. 

When the men and women understand these 
vital questions, and through their understand- 
ing can intermingle in political and in business 
life, as well as the social without contamination, 
then truly will the earth be cleansed. 

UKEVEBSAL TKAINING 

Universal training will be a good step in the 
right direction. All boys will be subjected to 
a severe physical examination, the same as ap- 
plied to anyone trying to enlist, or called to 
military duty. This examination would come 
at an age when it is most needed, and then while 
undergoing training physically the boys would 
also receive instructions in physiology, or in 
other words, taking care of the body and keep- 
ing it clean morally. This training would fit 
them for a useful life in business, as well as 
in the social life, as a clean moral man is more 
apt to make a success of himself than otherwise. 



CHAPTER XIII 

GOVEBNMENT AID 

ONE great question that arises to my mind, 
and which I think is being formulated in 
a bill, is the question of helping every man in 
America to own his own home and pay for it 
as he can. If this measure were adopted 
whereby a man could submit his plans for a 
home for his family, and could borrow enough 
from the government on a small interest and 
long terms, it would do much in my belief to 
create a nation of loyal people, and also make 
our land a land of homes, real homes, not rented 
ones. 

HOME 

If the average man was paying on a home of 
his very own, he would naturally spend his 
spare time in improving the place instead of 
attending bolshevists' meetings. When a man 
has a real interest in the land, through owning 
a part of it, he is not going to take chances on 
losing it through disloyalty, and then, too, it 
makes for more contented family life. . 

The government has proved that the farm 
loan business is a success, although money is 
loaned on a small margin, and if this is true, 
why would not the home loan proposition prove 

57 



58 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

to be as successful from a financial standpoint, 
as well as an economic standpoint, to the bor- 
rower, and then see that measures are taken to 
protect the builder from fraudulent parasites 
who would try to get the contracts for building 
and would make a big steal out of the deals. 
Pass laws requiring honest building of homes, 
not mere frames to be sold as homes, and have 
an expert mechanic go over each place before 
allowing a loan, to see that there is no fraud 
toward the home owner, and therefore toward 
the government. 

MIGEATOEY AMEEICANS 

The American nation is what might be called 
a migratory nation, as most of its people of 
average standing, or less, are rent payers, not 
home owners. This is not good for the welfare 
of the nation at large, as it does not make for 
a loyal and patriotic people, in that they really 
have nothing to be loyal or patriotic about. 
That is one reason why Americans are great 
spenders, feeling as a great many do, that it 
is as well to live from one payday to the other 
instead of laying aside enough for the future. 
But if the people were given an impetus to 
save by the government passing a measure pro- 
viding a way to start paying on a home, it 
would soon make a difference in the people of 
the nation, and from spenders they would soon 
become savers and procreaters of the earth. 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 59 

This is what the country needs at this time 
when war has ravaged the young manhood of 
the countries. It cannot afford to stand still 
in the matter of creation, and if the mere fact 
of owning homes will help in this vital manner, 
it is the duty of the nation to see that this 
question has immediate and serious attention. 

BIRTH EATE 

The world can ill afford to go backward, or to 
stand still, at this critical period in the matter 
of birth rate, and a good step forward, though 
it would seem a bit radical at the moment, 
would be to allow a certain sum, or bonus, at 
the birth of every child to parents of moderate 
means, who are naturalized citizens of the 
nation, this sum to help in allaying the expense 
attached to maternity. Every couple should 
give to the country at least two offsprings. 
Every marriage that remains barren is that 
much of a loss to the nation. Children are, or 
should be, as natural productions of nine-tenths 
of the marriages performed in the land, as the 
fruit follows the flowers, or the tree springs 
from the seed that is sown, and the tenth, or 
sterile marriage, that remains unproductive, is 
like unto the seed without germ, or the seed 
sown on barren soil — but a waste. 

CHILDREN 

Children make the home and keep the home 
ties strong throughout life. True, they are 



60 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

often the cause of much worry on the part of 
the parents, not only while in infancy and ten- 
der years, but often throughout life; but on 
the other hand a home without children is a 
dull and barren home, even though social duties 
give life a semblance of gayety, and companion- 
ship. It is in the mature age that this bar- 
renness is felt the keenest. When social obliga- 
tions are beginning to pall, and age comes 
creeping on, then if there is no offspring to the 
union a great void is felt that nothing seems to 
fill. 

It is God's plan, as in the case of all things 
that live, that reproduction must be carried on 
by the sexes, and God's laws must be obeyed. 

EUGENICS 

There should be rigid laws enacted in regard 
to the mating of physically unfits, and health 
certificates should be required of every person 
entering the marriage state to insure the future 
of the offspring. All persons afflicted with pul- 
monary weakness, or people without normal 
mentalities, should be barred from the marriage 
state, and all confirmed criminals, or degen- 
erates of either sex, should be unsexed. If this 
were carried out to the letter of the laws as 
they should be, you would see a great decrease 
in the number of mentally deficient, and also 
deformed and depraved children, born into the 
world. This is a tender subject to discuss, but 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 61 

it is one that needs more light being cast upon 
it. If laws can be passed for the good of stock 
and cattle, why cannot children of the future 
be protected in some way by law? 

I have heard people say that if there was a 
just God in heaven, He would not allow the 
little children to be born on earth to suffer 
through the sins of their parents, but God can 
teach His people no other way than through 
these methods of the results of folly on the 
part of the parents, or even extending in some 
cases back to second and third generations. 
The children who are born to suffer are God's 
special cares. He makes up to them for the 
suffering they have to undergo, but it takes 
drastic measures to teach the lessons that com- 
mon intuition ought to tell mortals, and often 
even these drastic measures are futile. 

I hope that in this message I send these fun- 
damental points will stand out clearly to all 
readers : Firstly, that this nation must become 
a nation of home owners to save itself; sec- 
ondly, that home owners are prone to become 
procreators of the race, and this is vital to the 
nation; and third, that marriage laws should 
be enacted to guard the health of the future 
generations to come. 

WAR SAVING STAMPS 

The government has at last begun the right 
system by inaugurating the War Saving Stamp 



62 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

movement, which movement was designed pri- 
marily to meet the need of the children for 
an impetus to save the pennies and buy Thrift 
Stamps to be converted into War Saving 
Stamps, or Baby Bonds, and many of the mil- 
lions that had formerly been spent promis- 
cuously were in the last year converted into 
these stamps, and more than one little spend- 
thrift in the making was converted into a saver 
of pennies instead of a waster. 

This is one of the great movements that the 
war really forced into being, and is to be com- 
mended in the highest terms and should be 
made a permanent institution by the govern- 
ment, as the good it does is so far reaching. 

Children taught to save in childhood will cul- 
tivate a habit that will mean much to them in 
their future. In closing I will say: Give the 
child a chance to live as a child, give them all 
freedom, but restrict them to a childish plane. 
Do not elevate them to your own before their 
time. 

U. S. BONDS 

Apropos of the subject of saving I wish to 
add a few words in regard to the great war 
loan drives and bonds. The enormous budgets 
required for war purposes necessitated the call- 
ing on the nation's wealth with which to finance 
the war, and in this way was the first bonds 
issued, to be succeeded by other issues as 
needed. 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 63 

Many hesitated to subscribe to the first and 
second issues because of misunderstandings that 
existed in regard to the bonds and their true 
value as collateral, but with the passing of time 
they grew to understand, in a way, just what 
the bonds meant and invested heavily. Some 
never did take kindly to the issues and bought 
only through coercion on the part of their em- 
ployers or townsmen, and these people placed 
little value on their investments, deeming them- 
selves lucky to sell at any price, and sell they 
did, and are doing, at the first opportunity 
offered, instead of holding fast and clipping 
coupons when due. This, as an investment fea- 
ture to the people, is of as great benefit as are 
the war saving stamps, and should prove a 
boon to careful, prudent investors, as it is one 
of the safest and most conservative buys on 
the market. 

The Fifth Liberty Loan, as it will be called, 
should receive hearty indorsement by all. 

The timid purchaser to the former issues has 
grown more timid through fear of declines in 
value of the bonds because of the quotations on 
the stock exchanges of the past issues, and this 
damnable outrage of gambling with national 
bonds at this time seems to me treasonable. 
It can and does interfere with the government's 
plans in floating new issues as needed, and some 
measure should be taken to put a stop to this 
nefarious work. The bonds have a face value 



64 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

and should be kept at that value, as they are 
as good as the gold in hand. 

Why not allow of their cancellation at full 
face value in case the holder can show extreme 
need of cash, just as in the case of the War 
Stamps, and limit the amount that each person 
is allowed to cancel? 

The companies formed to take over these 
bonds at market value will reap a harvest off 
of the small patriotic investor, hard pressed for 
cash or afraid to take chances in holding on to 
the bonds in the face of their lowering value 
on the market. While this condition cannot be 
outlawed, it is not fair, but the wild-cat com- 
panies formed to trade in worthless stocks that 
are shown to carry more interest to the investor 
by fraudulent reports shown the prospective 
trader for gilt-edge government bonds, can 
and should be legislated off the earth, and the 
promoters thrown into jail for an indefinite 
time. 

The government has acted fair and square 
in all matters pertaining to the bond issues, 
and it should not allow others to step in and 
fleece the unwary now. Lincoln was right in a 
way when he said: "You can fool some of the 
people part of the time." Anyone with com- 
mon intelligence would know that a man was 
not traveling over the country trading A No. 1 
stocks bringing in a high rate of interest for 
the patriotic duty of collecting government 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 65 

bonds at a nominal interest, bnt the fools are 
not all dead yet, and some protection must be 
given them. 

There is no better or safer investment in the 
whole world than these bits of paper, and every- 
one who holds them should do so until forced 
to part with them on their maturity. 

Your country has thanked you a thousand 
times for your help in loaning her this money, 
but when you bought and paid for your little 
store of bonds, or your single bond, she thought 
you was making good the promises they stood 
for. A loan of your mite for the terms under 
which they were issued is your patriotic duty, 
as well as a duty to your own future welfare. 
Keep to the terms of the contract, and when the 
new loan is floated, buy again to your utmost. 
Above all things, be patriotic when your country 
calls. 

THE FLEECER 

More than one fleecer of the public sprung up 
during the war, and all are as despicable as are 
the grafters of war bonds. Given the name 
of profiteer they are at liberty among the 
people of the land, when in truth, under the 
name of thief, they should be behind the bars. 
"What difference between a man who robs from 
necessity and who is called plain thief and dealt 
with accordingly and the man who sits in luxury 
and steals from scores! To my mind the com- 



66 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

mon thief is the better man of the two. A steal 
is a steal, and a man who deliberately takes ad- 
vantage of the conditions caused by war and 
under methods that appear honest enough to 
the observer does plan and carry out enormous 
swindles against the people who have no re- 
dress in the matter, by substituting inferior 
materials in the making of the clothing that 
constitutes a necessity to the poor, and to the 
wage earner, and who deliberately substitutes 
inferior foodstuffs, or raises the price, already 
high enough, to an exorbitant figure, that man, 
I say, is criminally guilty of thievery and should 
be dealt with accordingly. 

THE CAUSE OE ANAKCHY 

Gambling in food and clothing, as I remarked 
in one of the former chapters of this book, 
should not be allowed. It works hardships on 
people already overburdened with care and 
worry over money matters, and is one of the 
great factors in the spread of unrest and Bol- 
shevism, or anarchy, among the people. 

"When a man works hard for his daily wage, 
sees his family economizing to the last cent 
and doing with only the barest necessities to 
make both ends meet, and often seeing the ends 
overlap on the wrong side of the ledger with 
never a chance to put aside a nest egg, he begins 
to think and wonder about the future and 
whether, after all, it is worth while keeping on. 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 67 

He sees the man of wealth living in luxury, 
his family well dressed and seemingly free from 
all the worries and cares of life, with servants to 
wait upon them hand and foot, and limousines 
at their call, and he begins to figure that he is 
helping pay for all this splendor with his hard- 
earned money and his daily labor. 

It is but a step more to anarchistic thoughts, 
especially when he hears these very same ideas 
expressed by his fellow workmen and exhorted 
by orators from a street corner, 

It is but a waste of time to try and sermonize 
to him about happiness in a cottage being of 
far more worth than barrenness among luxury 
in a palace. The outward side of the easy life 
looks good to him, and he feels that he would 
willingly take a chance on the inner side, but if 
government measures would be taken against 
all those guilty of extortion against the com- 
mon people and would land those who were 
guilty where they really belonged, and where 
their conscience tells them they belonged, jus- 
tice would be satisfied and the working man 
would see that his life was, after all, the more 
desirable life of the two; but as long as these 
wolves are allowed freedom to live off of the 
fat of the land and to exist on the labor of 
others like parasites, then so long will you see 
unrest and trouble among the masses. But give 
all a fair deal and peace will prevail. 

If a certain per cent of profit, figuring over- 



68 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

head expense and allowing so much as interest 
on capital and so much as profit, were stabilized 
it would be the just and right way to handle 
a fast growing menace to peace among the 
classes. No man is entitled to an enormous 
profit through the labor of another, or through 
the inability of another to demand his rights 
in the matter. 

The same condition prevails in the money 
marts. Banks realize enormous profits on their 
capital stocks, this mainly through the misfor- 
tune of others through need of help, and this 
condition can and should be remedied by the 
government as soon as peace conditions will 
allow. 

Establish banks under government control 
where the common people can be accommodated 
without being forced to pay enormous interests. 
Give them a chance to see that American gov- 
ernment is for the people and with the people, 
not for the capitalists and politicians and 
against the people. 

A LAW AS A SOLDIER^ MEMORIAL 

The bill for loans to those seeking a home 
will be a big step in this right direction, but 
added to it a banking system where loans of 
all denominations could be had, on the same 
basis as loans are made through private bank- 
ing institutions, but on a nominal interest 
charge, and one of the biggest strides in Amer- 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

lean freedom from tyranny would be made. If 

s^:_ ■?. "': ill — ri'r ii:r : 1::- 1 .inl :•-: 1 :: — :zl '. 
be a far greater victory for humanity and jus- 
tice to the people than any victory brought 
about by wai Name it as a memorial to the 
departed soldier braves and it will keep their 
ziiriLiry crii'li-rr iz. :_r mills :: il ~ :z .n~ 
memorial that money eonld erect. They would 
ask nothing greater, nor could they receive any 
greater. 

Give the so-called common people their chance 
t: i~T ;..- iirr ;_:: ii: :lr fr.-.: :: ; : _z 1: ^il 

IrTrl rirrl tlr ] ! IlLTry - _ . 1 " ?! = "" / i _t 

ressoi r a 1^1 npon them a:_ sm dy 5 the 

stji r:sr5 :\::Tr ziyiTA-r : . t" ;'.v.v. : ■_ :: ::z- 
•iitions ~li : :^1t :: : v 1_: : :i: -_: . / 1_ : :: . - 



CHAPTER XIV 

LOYALTY 

THE loyalty of tlie people must be firmly im- 
bedded in their hearts through loyalty 
shown them by the country's leaders by passing 
measures favoring them in the vital issues of 
life. Once this loyalty is imbedded it will take 
much to uproot it again and the foundation for 
everlasting patriotism that is real will be laid, 
to be passed on in the blood of the children and 
their children's children. 

The returning soldiers from abroad will tell 
of the wonders of the loyalty shown by the 
peoples of the foreign countries upon whose 
soil they were privileged to step, and how much 
more there is in this grand and glorious country 
to be loyal to. I see now the great mistakes 
made by those seeking prestige and power 
through partisanship to party in assailing their 
government, and its leaders, in all matters, no 
matter how small and trivial, just so that much 
noise can be made that will in the end cause 
friction among the voting population of the 
country. 

If members of Congress would but devote 
their efforts to the work that awaits them at 
every turn, more good would come of their ses- 

70 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 71 

sions and much accomplished that is left undone 
or neglected, while arguments hold the floor. 
This is not what these men were sent to Wash- 
ington for by their constituents. They are sent 
to present the needs of their community and to 
help frame laws for the benefit of the people's 
welfare, not to use their time for furthering 
their own ambitions or prestige. 

PARTY ISSUES 

Party issues should be forgotten by this body 
of men, and all should work together for the 
best interests of the nation at large, voting as 
their consciences dictate and reason allows, not 
as party demands and sanctions. 

The President has full power to veto the 
measures as passed by both houses, but it is 
not often that this power is used by him, as 
the man that occupies the presidential chair 
usually figures that regardless of party the law- 
makers have used every means at their disposal 
to give the measure full investigation as to its 
merits, or its drawbacks, before sending it 
through for his signature, and so gives little 
attention to the real value of the documents in 
regards to a minute examination of their worth. 
This is not always the case, though, but has 
been in past years when the occupant of the 
chair was more the politician than the student. 
From what I can see for the future this system 
of electing men for their political attributes 



72 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

instead of their manly qualifications is past, 
and men will have to show that their life has 
been such that they are worthy of the honor 
as well as capable of filling the position with 
trust. 

No man will be elected purely on his military 
or economic reputation, but on his reputation 
as to honesty of purpose and a platform for 
and with the people, based on reforms to the 
betterment of the common people as against 
the moneyed interest, but dealing fairly to all. 

Any man with strength enough to plan a 
platform based, as I say, on reform for the peo- 
ple, and with strength of purpose enough to 
carry out these reforms in the face of strong 
opposition, and even danger, will become an 
idol of the people when they see that he is 
true to his campaign promises, and therefore 
true to those who voted for him. 

It would be a great thing for the welfare of 
the country if parties were none-existent and 
the names of men brought up for nomination 
through some new method and recommended 
for their worth alone, not given the nomination 
solely because they happened to belong to the 
strongest party, and instead of sending electors 
to decide the fate of the candidates, as is the 
present method, let the people's votes decide 
direct. 

The party with which I was affiliated seems, 
in my opinion, to be rather weak in the matter 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 73 

of a leader for the forthcoming campaign, and 
I hope that they will be more fortunate in the 
interval that will elapse before necessity com- 
pels them to choose. I have no suggestions to 
make in that regard at this time, as I see it 
wonld do little good, if any, to voice my choice 
from the status I now occupy, so I will leave 
this question to those who feel better qualified 
to answer it in a material way, but I will give 
this note of warning: Choose your man with 
care and foresight if you expect results in the 
next great campaign, and do not attack present 
and past policies promiscuously unless you have 
proof, and absolute proof, of discrepancies and 
better policies to offer in their place. 

Dig in and show the voters, you men of the 
old party, that you are capable of doing your 
duty justly without holding partisan feuds and 
bitter thoughts. Don't let the other side carry 
away all of the honors in the name of humanity, 
justice and right. Stick to the colors of your 
nation in handling her law machinery rather 
than to the colors of party if they interfere in 
what your sense of justice calls right. 

The people take cognizance of your actions 
while in session, even to the smallest detail, and 
act accordingly later. Don't hinder the admin- 
istration for purely partisan reasons during the 
pre-peace era, as it will only cause unfavorable 
reaction later when favorable action will be 
needed. I speak from a clear insight into the 



74 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

thoughts and minds of the masses, as they are 
open to my inspection now, and I am only try- 
ing to help in the one way left to me now. Heed 
the advice of your one time leader, and be true 
to yourself, and to your country, and your con- 
stituents, above party or other interests. 

PAKTY ISSUES IN 1920 

How rich in material politicians feel are the 
fields around them. With the greatest issues 
the United States has ever had before it to 
choose from as campaign hot-bunk, what a shift- 
ing back and forth and what a dodging of re- 
sponsibilities will ensue. 

Fortified with the League of Nations and the 
peace pact on one side and the railroad and 
labor troubles on the other the parties will both 
drown the country in oratoryism. 

What will I have missed, and how my name 
will be bandied from mouth to mouth, lauded 
by the very men who caused me to secede from 
the ranks and allowed the party in power to win. 

Were I on earth today and on the day of party 
nominations I would be elbowed aside for the 
newercomers in the race who stood so valiantly 
and prominently in the public eye as buffers for 
their party in the last sessions of Congress. 
Do not be deceived, my friends, into thinking 
that they have lowered their ambition or donned 
the hats they had doffed preparatory to casting 
them ringward. 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 75 

DAEK HOESE MOST POWERFUL 

The most powerful man in the whole cycle 
of parties is what is usually termed in these 
cases a dark horse, and his name will be sub- 
mitted late. 

Cohorts of former days, take stock of your 
gaff and don't let your bile be the ruination of 
your party 's interest at a time when her chances 
are of the best. 

The people have grown tired of Democratic 
party rule, though they know not where their 
best interests lay, and are ready for a change if 
but offered a straw at which to grasp. 

POLITICIANS, RESTORE ILLUSIONS 

Playing politics in the house and in the senate 
will never do a cudgeon of good, and will never 
give the people the confidence they are looking 
for and rightfully need. It will take more than 
mere words, though eloquent they may be, to 
dispel suspicion and lull to rest resentments 
and restore illusions where disillusions are har- 
bored now. 

THE PLATFORM 

Make your platform conform to true Amer- 
ican standards for the Americans who live upon 
your shores. Hoist Old Glory to the pinnacle 
and stand as men beneath her folds, ready to 
come clean for her sake and the people she rep- 
resents. 



76 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

Down party partisanship and hatreds if it 
interferes or clashes with what you know to be 
her best interests. If your hated, though now 
successful, rival party has done good things 
throughout its tenure of reign, and in your heart 
you know these things to be good, not only for 
the country but for the world at large, don't 
belittle or bemean them for what little good 
it might do your party, but stop in your tracks 
and remember that the great American public 
has eyes to see with and ears equipped for hear- 
ing. 

What great things are before you today, op- 
portunities such as no party has ever before 
faced and at such an opportune time! An op- 
portunity if you will but grasp it at the right 
time and in the right way to make amends for 
the failures of your representatives in the last 
two sessions now closed, and to again hoist your 
party to the pinnacles of success. 

HECTOKING POLICY 

You must admit your haranguing and hector- 
ing policy has been a failure in many ways. 
Your wash-woman methods of handling big 
questions has cast a blot on your party's name. 

Holding a bludgeon over a sick man's head 
and reigning blow after blow upon him through 
false accusations and implications that have 
turned as a boomerang, has proven a bit like 
teasing what was thought to be a sick and help- 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 77 

less cat lying in the forest shade and which if 
care is not taken will prove to be a man-eating 
tiger. 

His cunning and almost supernatural gift of 
handling any situation and coming out on top, 
even when confined as an invalid, should be 
warning enough to let him be. 

Never harass a God-gifted man lest the Al- 
mighty take sides with him against you. By 
you I mean no one particular party cohort, but 
the members of the party as a whole, all have 
been offenders to a certain extent and all need 
a call down now. Each can sift over the mass of 
accusations and take what most he needs for 
the betterment of his own interests and to the 
good of the party as a whole. 

PLANKS 

Build your platform, as I say, on Amer- 
icanism for Americans, which means for fair 
play to the world as well as to those who call 
America home. Build your platform of planks 
that will withstand the buffings of not only cam- 
paign work but also strong enough to endure 
as pledges that can be fulfilled without back- 
down on any one issue that the American people 
will want to hold you to. Pledge help to those 
who labor by promising them a tribunal before 
which they can place their differences and upon 
which they can look for a square deal. Insert 
a plank and make it a strong one, pledging the 



78 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

aid of the Republican party in making America 
safe for Americans and freeing them from the 
terrorism of Soviet Reds, whether these same 
Reds be American born or affiliated Americans 
in name only. 

THIN ICE 

Get the American masses with your party in 
heart and mind and you will have little trouble 
getting them at the polls, but first get their 
confidence restored in the party by giving them 
the right man and the right platform, and in 
the meantime, regardless of party and partisan- 
ship, give them a square deal now, if not you 
will be but furnishing the thunder for your 
opponents' campaign. The ice is thin, boys, in 
spite of its firm appearance. 



CHAPTER XV 

CONGRESS 

CONGRESS is not a clearing house for the 
airing of individual prejudices, or wrongs, 
but is the great law-making institution of the 
nation and should be held inviolate against petty 
grievances and trivial quarreling being carried 
on among its members in session there. 

Men are supposed to be sent to that institu- 
tion, not fretful, sulky boys. I, myself, have 
seen many of the latter type on its floors, hot 
in an argument, one with the other to the edifica- 
tion of the spectators gathered in the gallery. 

Dignity should prevail under that roof al- 
ways. If quarrels must be had take them out- 
side into the corridors, but do not put ridicule 
into the sacred chambers, through your own loss 
of dignity. Remember, too, that times and con- 
ditions are changing the policies and precedents 
of the entire world. 

PRECEDENTS 

Do not spend time in arguing against a 
measure, or act, because of its establishing a 
new precedent over the old, or because it shat- 
ters the sacred conventions held by Washington 

79 



80 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

and other dead presidents. What was just and 
right and for the good of humanity in their 
day, cannot and does not apply to the present 
day and its crises any more so than the saddled 
horse could take his place against the more 
modern means of locomotion today. This is a 
fine stand to take to show a patriotic front, 
but you know, as well as I can see in your hearts, 
that times have brought about changes all 
around, in America as well as in every civilized 
country in the world. 

LAW 

War is a great leveler and destroyer of con- 
ventions and traditions, but in destroying the 
old it makes place for the newer ones that apply 
to changing conditions, usually to the better- 
ment of the masses. I do not believe in sta- 
tionary laws and statutes that are made in one 
generation and applied in another when condi- 
tions are on an entirely different status. Too 
many laws cluttering up the records, and almost 
entirely obsolete laws from their very antiquity, 
are brought into play from their musty hiding 
places to tangle and harass the modern school. 

If I had my way about it, as I see things now, 
I would declare most laws passed before the 
war void, and would start in on a new set of 
statutes that would apply to the modern day 
style of thinking and living, and the laws that 
I should declare constitutional would be straight 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 81 

American laws, without quirk or technicalities, 
to confuse and thwart the unwary, or unversed. 
I would have a spade called a spade and not 
a diamond. I would make the laws such that a 
misplacing of a period, comma or a misspelled 
word would not cheat justice and allow for a re- 
trial; senseless, useless waste of valuable time 
and often the means of doing a rank injustice 
to one who has right on their side. I would 
make the courts of the land places where justice 
was meted out, as correctly as possible, not mere 
stages for the matching of lawyer's wits, often 
to the detriment of the party in the right, espe- 
cially when held before a jury of twelve men, 
tried and true, but usually a motley band of 
mixed classes, totally ignorant and unfit to sit 
on the judgment of a case. 

JURY SERVICE 

Men selected for jury service should not be 
taken at random and paid a nominal hire, but 
men for jury service, especially on cases of 
life or death, should be men well read in the 
law and men of enough intelligence to know 
right from wrong in testimony and able to pick 
the grain from the chaff of the opposing attor- 
ney's impassioned addresses to the jury. 

More than one man has gone to his fate 
through the eloquence of the prosecuting attor- 
ney leaving a more favorable impression than 
the efforts of the other. 



82 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

Too much stress cannot be laid on this evil 
of allowing men without education or percep- 
tions to decide on another's fate. I have seen 
men act in this capacity as judge of another's 
guilt that I myself would not choose, and I 
know that no manager of a dog show would 
allow as judge of his dog's guilt in stealing a 
bone if the evidence was right in the dog's 
mouth. 

If men of proper qualifications were used 
on juries there would not be as much injustice 
done as is the case now, and jury bribing and 
tampering would be eliminated to a greater 
extent, especially in cases dealing with the un- 
derworld, where often juries are bought and 
sold as so much merchandise, especially in the 
larger cities where cases can be changed to 
courts in which friendly judges and bailiffs pre- 
side. 

Money defeats justice on too many occasions, 
and too much care cannot be taken by the voter 
in casting his vote for a judge. Read up and 
make all inquiries that you can upon his past 
records, not only as a judge, but as a man in 
the every day pursuits of life. 

THE JUDGE 

If a man lives clean every day of his life, 
you can usually bank on his doing the clean 
thing on the job. There is no office, to my 
mind, that needs a man more of moral and 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 83 

of just reasoning powers than does the office of 
judge, and he who administers justice to the 
best of the ability that is in him, without preju- 
dices or favoritism, will never have to fear the 
hand of retribution overtaking him. 



CHAPTER XVI 

MISTAKEN VIEWS 

ONCE more I will shatter my earthly policies 
and contentions when I literally jump on 
those who are in contention against the Presi- 
dent of the United States in his peace program. 
As I see clearly now from spirit land, it is not 
right or is it just to elect a man to office, the 
highest he can hold in the nation, and then to 
allow him to bear the brunt of attacks from all 
quarters, purely for partisan reasons. I con- 
fess I was as big an offender as could be found, 
even up to the day of my passing, and were it 
not for my prominence before the public eye 
and the prestige of my position as a former 
ruler, coupled with the magnanimity of Mr. 
Wilson, I am afraid that I would have spent my 
last days in confinement for sedition. The at- 
tacks I made against him were such as would 
have sent many another of less prominence to 
prison, and it was not fair, as I view it now, 
for either I to take advantage of my position or 
of others allowing me the free rein. 

ATTACKS ON THE PKESIDENT 

To my way of thinking now, the office of 
President of the United States should be held 

84 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 85 

inviolate against attacks of either a personal 
or political nature during his actual reign of 
office. He should be given every opportunity 
to make good in his position, and instead of 
opposition on every hand from his political op- 
ponents he should receive help and encourage- 
ment. 

While America is considered a free country, 
freedom of speech should have a limit. When 
license is reached in making attacks on the per- 
son of the ruler, either to make him appear 
ridiculous or weak willed before his constitu- 
ents, all such should be guilty of lese-majeste. 

What more fair offer could be made than the 
recent one of asking permission to go over the 
points that are held to be essential to the form- 
ing of a league of nations, and which have prac- 
tically been accepted and approved as a base for 
the league by all of the allied nations, and which 
was made in full faith to the existing lawmakers 
of the country, bidding them to withhold dis- 
cussions of the league until such a time as would 
be advisable after all of the facts could be pre- 
sented as they were received at first hand and 
each point of the basic foundation could be fully 
explained and discussed by the only one really 
capable of giving first-hand news of the work 
accomplished in France! To my mind the re- 
fusal of certain members of the body to attend 
this discussion constitutes treason against their 
country's best interests. They are but playing 



86 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

politics, not acting fairly, either to their Presi- 
dent or to the people they represent. This is 
not a time to do that. It is a critical time in 
the history of the country, and reason and fair- 
mindedness should prevail, not politics. I do 
not hold with such as these now. Their petti- 
ness will avail them nothing as far as I can fore- 
tell. 

The President has the power to do much in 
his own way, and he will not abuse or dishonor 
that power by using it in a manner to bring 
dishonor and shame upon the land, but to bring 
honor and fame and good will of all the world 
through his uprightness in dealing fairly with 
each nation to the best of his ability and power. 

MODERN CONDITIONS 

To say that he is destroying the constitution 
that was made possible through Washington 
and that Lincoln reverenced and died for by 
adding new precedents and by allying this free 
country with the nations of the earth in a com- 
pact that will interfere with her liberties in 
different ways is like objecting to the electric 
lights because the nation first knew candles and 
could do well with them, or like objecting to 
modern progress on the grounds that our coun- 
try was founded on the old methods that have 
been superseded by the new. 

Times have changed and with them have gone 
many of the old traditions and ideas. Condi- 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 87 

tions have also changed, especially so in the last 
fonr years, and these changes have brought 
about the need for greater changes throughout 
the world. 

THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS 

Governments have been formed, monarchies 
overthrown, and once powerful nations have 
been mutilated and maimed. Through all this 
shall America stand by and allow readjustments 
to take form of themselves without support or 
frame upon which to lean or build ! Should she 
allow her time-worn constitution to interfere 
in her plans for a greater brotherhood of man 
throughout the world in which justice and peace 
and humanity to man can be brought about, just 
as Christ would have had it were he on earth? 

AMERICA A LEAGUE OF STATES 

What is America today but a league of states, 
all existing as one under one flag and one fed- 
eral constitution, but each being governed as a 
sovereignty through its own state laws! Can 
any find objection to this? Well, then, I think 
that when these men of Congress hear the real 
facts of the league as it will be given them by 
the President they will see that the whole struc- 
ture is built on about the same plan, and would 
in the end work in just about the same way 
after the newness wears off the gears and times 
become normal over the world again. 



88 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

A mere acceptance of the invitation extended 
will in no way pledge any one of the members, 
nor will he be compelled to change opinions or 
his attitude one atom if after hearing the facts 
he is still of the same mind as before. Don't 
allow prejudices or political aims to govern you. 
Keep reason foremost. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE BUDGET SYSTEM 

AT the present writing I see one great radical 
-^*move that would be the finest and most rea- 
sonable and sensible thing for some member of 
Congress to suggest, and to have the matter dis- 
cussed and passed on, and that is, to have a 
Minister of Finance appointed to make out a 
budget of the annual expenses and to hold each 
department responsible for its expenditures, 
and all appropriations asked by special legisla- 
tors for different purposes in their own states 
would be carefully gone over and granted or 
rejected as seems best by experts trained to 
work of appraising and reporting on needed 
improvements. 

This would do away with much grafting and 
politics would not be so lucrative a game, and 
therefore would not hold such an appeal to the 
certain classes that seem to dominate as bosses 
for purely financial reasons, and pork barrel 
appropriations would become myths if the right 
system was employed and the right man chosen 
for the place, which should be made a permanent 
office to the man qualified to fill it and not a 
political plum. 



90 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

OUE SYSTEM 

The public moneys should have more protec- 
tion than are given to it now. It is an easy 
matter for most any member of the congres- 
sional assembly to introduce a bill for an appro- 
priation for his community to be thrown as a 
sop to his constituents to gain their good will 
and to give him prestige and votes among them. 
In this way many millions are squandered each 
year on unnecessary public buildings and public 
improvements that could be saved and put to 
better use later. 

Millions of dollars of the public moneys are 
getting to be but a mere bagatelle, to be shunted 
about at will of a few men instead of passing 
appropriations for great national improvements 
throughout the country, such as in the reclama- 
tion of land for the settlement of returning 
soldiers from France, and the building of homes 
and highways throughout this vast acreage that 
is now both swamp or desert, and in this way 
not only providing for the future of the soldier, 
but giving employment to them as well in the 
present needs when labor seems scarce and un- 
rest is growing throughout the nation because 
of this scarcity of work. That, to my mind, 
would be killing two birds with one stone, and 
also reclaiming vast areas of untilled but fer- 
tile soil to the betterment of all concerned, in- 
cluding the nation as well. 

Would this not be a better way to spend the 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 91 

public money at this time of great need than to 
appropriate it for the erection of some ornate 
public building in a little jerk- water town of 
nil inhabitants for the exploitation of some 
political aspirant to fame! 

The soldiers have seen how well developed 
every inch of the fertile soil of France is kept, 
and then he thinks of the acres and acres of idle 
land in America that would support millions of 
people if it were cultivated, or cut up into stock 
ranges for the breeding of cattle and sheep. 
It is a great national waste of resources and 
should have the attention of Congress at the 
earliest moment. 

PRESENT NEEDS 

The dockets should be cleared of all bills not 
pertaining to the immediate needs of the coun- 
try in these post-war days, and should be kept 
free from bills of this sort until such a time as 
Congress can give them attention without in- 
terfering with the needs of the day. By the 
needs of the day I do not mean suffrage ques- 
tions and political wrangles of any kind. What 
I do mean is the vital questions of life, to be 
instilled throughout the nation by doing just 
what the constitution calls for. Bringing the 
government up to its right plane, "for the peo- 
ple, of the people, and by the people,' ' and by 
doing this they will be doing the duties that 
they were sent to Washington to fulfill. 



92 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

Keep the nation's citizens busy with work 
that is to their liking and give them lucrative 
payment for their work. Abolish the practical 
politician and substitute the man of high ideals 
and honesty in his place, and give the people a 
chance to live their lives as God intended them 
to do, free from oppression and with a chance 
to forge ahead through government help and 
encouragement, and America will become the 
most formidable nation on earth. Not because 
she will be the most feared for her dominant 
powers of prestige through power, but because 
she will have such gifts, and her shores will be- 
come as a paradise to homeseekers through im- 
migration. But she will be feared because of 
her power of attraction to the foreign home- 
seekers and lovers of freedom and justice and 
liberty, and her shores will be in danger of 
being overfilled. 

AMEKICA A MECCA 

America is a paradise as it stands today, but 
she would become, as I say, a mecca for seekers 
of paradise if she but added a few new reforms 
and precedents to her statutes in favor of the 
people and following as nearly as possible the 
lines I have suggested in the former chapters 
of this work. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

GEOKGE WASHINGTON 

ON the occasion of the birthday of both the 
father of the country and the man who 
virtually united its states through the Civil 
War, there is a tendency on the part of public 
speakers, who make politics their life work, to 
use these days and occasions for a furtherment 
of their aims by making speeches of a political 
nature instead of a spiritual nature in memory 
of the dead. 

The life of George Washington was thrilling 
in the extreme, outside of his life as President 
in the days of the Revolution. He was a fear- 
less leader and a great general. The methods 
of warfare in vogue at that time were simple, 
but today he would not be able to train a recruit 
before first receiving instructions himself. He 
endured hardships with his armies, and often 
slept on the muddy ground with hunger as his 
bed fellow. He helped to give this country 
freedom, and he helped to frame its constitu- 
tion. 

HIS CUSTOMS 

He was utterly at sea in his first tenure of 
office as regards to what customs would be cor- 
rect not only in the business, but in the social 

93 



94 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

attitude as well. It was a great responsibility, 
in a way, to assume an office so high and so 
newly created with no precedents to follow and 
no established social customs to maintain, but 
after all his was the easier task when compared 
with the duties of a President of the present 
day. His was the right to set new customs and 
to establish them to his convenience and to his 
liking, but are the days of his regime to be com- 
pared with the modern day and demands? If 
not, then why harp on the changes that are made 
from time to time! 

PKESIDENTS IN EUROPE 

Having nothing in common with countries of 
Europe that would necessitate his crossing the 
ocean, and, in fact, realizing he would be far 
better off at home, he kept to the shores of 
America ; therefore he created a precedent that 
has carried through the ages, but was this be- 
cause of his belief that his duties as President 
were so sacred that he must cling to his own 
shores to hold that sacredness inviolate? And 
was this precedent handed down through the 
ages, sacred and unprofaned, by the long line 
of his successors to the chair because they, too, 
felt that they were needed on their own shores 
most! 

Did ever one of them, clear down the line to 
the present day, ever have other excuse than 
pleasure to make such a trip excusable? Then 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 95 

why did we all raise such a commotion and try 
to impede the journey of the only occupant of 
the chair whose duty called him to foreign 
shores? He attended to his duties in a strict 
business sense in spite of the homage paid him 
there. 

DIED ON THE JOB 

Let us look over our own records while he 
was gone. Can any of us say the same? Just 
see what I did. Laid down and died on the job, 
but did my cohorts in political circles do any 
better than I? If so, show me the results of 
their labors. 

Will it require a whole busy week of a busy 
man's time to attend to the signing of measures 
and to other work at hand that has been ac- 
cumulating for him on his return through the 
overwork of Congress? Suffice to say that if 
he is satisfied with the work accomplished it 
will be a great surprise to me. 

MEMORIAL OEATIONS 

When oratoring at the grave of the brave 
Washington, or on a public platform, before 
you make your speech a denunciation of the 
man in power and his policies, and before you 
declaim in loud and eloquent language how he 
is bringing the country and her constitution to 
dishonor and to ruin, stop and question your 
own conduct as to fulfilling the duties of that 



96 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

constitution to your best ability, and of just 
how you are fulfilling the pledges of the plat- 
form that put you where you stand in your 
party. 

Try to visualize the spirit of the past Presi- 
dent in whose memory you speak, and stop to 
consider whether he would approve of what you 
are doing for your country and her honor, and 
whether he would consider it an honor to have 
his memory and his birthday commemorated 
with a denunciatory elegy of one whose position 
should command respect throughout the nation, 
even though his policies were not your own. 
In the future remember this when preparing 
your memorial orations. Stick to the subject 
in hand and do not neglect the memory of the 
spirit dead in your vehemence against the 
living. 



CHAPTER. XIX 

WAB 

PTJTTIXG- aside all political questions and 
controversies, we will take np the subject 
of war in all its phases. This last great war will 
lend enongh facts without going back into his- 
tory to delve into other wars that now appear 
to be mere scraps by the side of this last con- 
flict. Germany was ready to declare war on the 
slightest provocation, as she was fully prepared 
to follow up her declarations with deeds, and 
could, with reasonable assurance, become victor 
over any foreign power in Europe. She knew 
the approximate strength of every nation in 
the world, including America, but she figured 
that American democracy would not permit of 
America 's entry into a foreign broil, but in that 
showed, like Achilles' heel, that which was 
thought of little matter, proved the undoing of 
the whole German Empire, for all the world 
knows today that without American interven- 
tion Germany would have been dictating the 
peace terms instead of the Allies. 

BELGIUM AND FBANCE 

Belgium and France bore the brunt of the 
war, not so much because the hatred of Ger- 
many willed it so, but because those two coun- 

97 



98 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

tries lay directly in the path of Germany's 
hoped for plan of reaching England and de- 
stroying her. If once France was conquered 
it would have been but an easy task to conquer 
England by using France as a base from which 
to strike. France was not an indomitable com- 
petitor against Germany's supremacy in the 
world's trade, nor were her people of the same 
progressive nature as the German's were. The 
people of France are a patient, home-loving and 
persevering people, not aggressive, progressive 
and ambitious for world supremacy as are the 
people of Germany. They were not ready or 
anxious for conflict, and therefore the odds 
were against them from the very day of the 
declaration, but Germany had business to attend 
to across the channel, and she went right after 
it, armed to the teeth and regardless of who or 
where she stepped. 

ENGLAND 

England saw the danger approaching, and 
with quick preceptions threw her armies in the 
field to the aid of France and Belgium, but she, 
too, was in an unprepared state and little 
dreamed of the extent of the preparation that 
had been going on in Germany for years with 
just such a conflict pictured as a goal. 

MILITAKISM THE CAUSE 

It was not all the fault and plan of the Kaiser, 
this World War. He was truly more the victim 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 99 

of militarism and had little or no power to 
either declare or suppress the outbreak. That 
was entirely in the hands of the militant powers 
of the nation, and they can truly be said to have 
dominated the ruler and the ruled in this matter, 
using the Kaiser mainly as a figurehead. By 
this I do not mean to convey the impression that 
he was not a party to the agreement. Having 
plans made and perfected to raise himself and 
country to the highest pinnacle in the whole 
world, towering high above his most despised 
rival, was something for which he was ready to 
risk all in giving the command when the time 
was ripe. 

THE EXCUSE 

The assassination that served as an excuse 
for the first declaration was but a flimsy one 
after all, but it served the purpose as well as 
another would have done. 

GEKMANY 

Germany was primarily a military nation, 
and to that end had used the scientific and in- 
ventive genius at her command to perfect her 
machinery of war, so that she was practically 
letter perfect in the art and its accompaniments. 
No other nation could have hoped for victory 
against her in that state. Her men were sol- 
diers, trained so from the cradle, and with a 
doggedness that only such environments could 



100 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

produce in man. No other nation, nnless nnder 
the same conditions, could produce such a set 
of men. 

The officers were for the most part arrogant 
and officious, and held little in common with the 
men under them, and by this bearing kept the 
men subdued and subservient and willing to 
be driven, as all their life they had been taught 
that a uniform meant law. 

HOME LIFE 

Pitted against this master machinery of war 
we have the peasant and provincial soldiers of 
Belgium and of France. Militarism to them had 
meant little. Homeland and family life much. 
Peaceful in the pursuits of their daily life and 
tasks they had little thought, and less heart, 
for matters of this kind, but when called to the 
defense of their native soil they proved what 
they could endure and suffer in her defense. 
Handicapped as they were, without modern 
equipment and without training, they put up a 
brave fight and died like the heroes they were, 
facing the foe. 

It is useless for me to try and visualize those 
first mad years of warfare. I was not there to 
see the conflicts and cannot speak at first hand, 
so will let others better qualified do that, but I 
can speak of their indomitable courage and 
their bravery throughout the whole dreadful 
carnage. Belgium became a battleground, a 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 101 

veritable hell indeed. She is but a ruin of her 
former prosperous little self, but in spite of all 
that, the spirit of her people is not broken and 
is not dead. She will rise up to a new and in a 
sense a loftier plane than that upon which she 
stood before her travail. She has lost much, 
but through her losses her gains will be great. 

KING ALBERT 

Her ruler is beloved by all subjects, as is his 
queen, with a love that is reverence for the most 
part. He showed his worth not only as a king 
of country by his actual participation in the 
struggle, but as a king of men as well, and one 
who deserves the homage and trust of his 
nation. 

FRANCE 

France, too, will see a rejuvenation of her 
land through war's scourge. Her people have 
a great deal in common with the Belgium peo- 
ple. Their lives run in about the same grooves, 
with home life their obsession, and to them home 
meant the nation, as well as their own little 
abode. 

It was in the defense of home and nation that 
they fought so valiantly in the face of what they 
knew was almost certain death, and today these 
two countries are almost totally bereft of their 
young manhood. That is one of the damnable 
phases of war. The very flower of manhood, 



102 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

the most perfect types, are sacrificed on its 
altar, while the older men who would gladly go 
in their places are left behind. This seems an 
injustice to the laymen, but it is the only just 
way, as men in middle life, or past their prime, 
would become physically unfit to carry on, even 
before finishing their practice marches. It takes 
men of youth's vigor to make soldiers of 
strength, but many a man of the older type was 
sacrificed in the conflict. 

OFFICERS 

It is different when speaking of officers, as 
they do not, as a rule, suffer the same hard- 
ships after reaching an advanced class as do the 
younger and more vigorous men. Older men in 
the service are usually not on actual field duty, 
but hold offices that do not call for the same 
vigor as required in field duty, but is, in a sense, 
more important from a strategist's point of 
view. 

PLUNDER 

It will take years to build up what has been 
destroyed throughout the battlegrounds, not 
only in the rehabilitating of the home lands and 
agricultural districts, but of the industrial dis- 
tricts as well. Here wanton damage was done, 
but not as many suppose, from sheer desire to 
destroy in ghoulish temper, but for the sake 
of salvage and loot — dear to the heart of every 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 103 

German. You will find that time will disclose 
the loot safe and sound and put to a practical 
purpose on German soil. 

They considered themselves the victors in 
truth and little dreamed what fate had in store 
for them through American intervention. Had 
they known that retreat and defeat was likely 
to overtake them, they would have spared more 
of the country, knowing that in the end in- 
demnities would be claimed, but as it was, and 
with victory so clearly defined before them, they 
looted and burnt and left terror in their wake 
to so impress the people of the conquered terri- 
tory that no hand would be lifted against them 
from sheer terror of the fate that would ensue, 
and also to impress them with the importance 
and dread of German militarism. 

The people of the invaded districts were not 
easily cowed into submission, and their defiance 
and their tauntings of the invaders brought 
about a swift and stern punishment, especially 
severe on the women and children of the dis- 
tricts. Many were taken as hostages and suf- 
fered hardships and torture from their ignorant 
and brutal task masters. Eape and carnage go 
hand in hand in the vanguard of an army of in- 
vasion, especially where the army has been in 
the field for an indefinite time. This is not al- 
ways a sign of degeneracy of a race, but is the 
natural sequence when restraint of passions and 
lust is not part of the training of the soldier. 



104 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

Men return to the primitive when on the march, 
and heretofore the battle cry has always been, 
to the victor belongs the spoils. 

It is not my desire to excuse or condone these 
crimes ; they are beastly and repulsive, but are 
not to be held as a blot against any one nation's 
honor or made an issue in the world's parley. 

SON WITH ME 

France and Belgium will be held sacred 
throughout the world as the resting places of 
so many brave lads of all nations. My own 
son sleeps among them there, in the eyes of 
the world, but in reality his body lies at peace 
beneath the sod, while his spirit lives on with 
me. 

GERMAN REPUBLIC 

France need have no fear of another invasion. 
Germany as a republic will lose all zest for 
war. The payment demanded of her through 
indemnity claims will rest heavy upon her shoul- 
ders for many years to come, and like all democ- 
racies she will be content to rest within her own 
borders. Her internal troubles are nearing an 
end, and she will emerge free from oppressions 
and from Kaiserism. This much the war has 
done for her — given her freedom through de- 
feat, while victory would have meant further 
enslavement for her people. God was with 
them, but not in the way that they thought. 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 105 

Mysterious are the workings of the Master 
to human mind so frail, but always with an end 
in view of love that cannot fail. The downfall 
of monarchy in Germany will mean not only 
freedom to her own people, but freedom from 
the fear of everlasting hatred and revenge that 
would haunt the minds of the closer allies. 

When peace at last settles boundary disputes 
and real peace settles upon the earth, it will be 
a lasting one. France has never been free from 
the bugbear of German autocracy and mili- 
tarism of the empire throughout the years of 
her existence, and even now, when peace is ap- 
parently at hand, she fears for a recurrence 
in the future, but of this I assure her there is 
no danger. 

The people of Germany will have a voice in 
the matter in the future, and when such a ques- 
tion is brought up for the decision of the voters 
it is usually vetoed without much dissent of 
opinion. 

INDEMNITY 

They have had to pay dearly in the blood of 
their loved ones for the ambitious and arrogant 
demands of their former leaders, and will in 
the years to come be heavily taxed to pay the 
material costs, not only of the actual warfare, 
but of the indemnities claimed as well, and when 
you strike a German through his pocketbook 
you strike at a vital point. 



106 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

Germany is well able to pay her debts, as sbe 
is a prosperous and thriving country, and her 
people are noted for their thrifty and hard 
working ways, and then, too, her country re- 
mains practically intact as to damage created 
by the war. She would be ready at very short 
notice to resume her trade relations with the 
world, but the freedom enjoyed in the days be- 
fore the war will naturally be restricted to her 
now, although a boycott of her goods will not be 
sanctioned by the peace envoys, as it would not 
tend to help matters to impede her in obtaining 
resources from which to adjust her claims, and 
in my opinion this is not only just but right, in 
so far that to bankrupt her now through an in-, 
ternational boycott would only react against 
those who hold just claims against her. If she 
became bankrupt through their efforts she 
might in revenge repudiate- all the national 
debts held against her treasury and defy the 
world to collect them from an empty purse, so 
for that reason alone, if for no other, sane rea- 
soning powers must be used, not retaliative 
methods. 

GEKMANY AND THE LEAGUE 

Germany must be included in the League of 
Nations. Her new form of government gives 
her that privilege. She is as an infant in the 
first phases of a new life, and must receive help 
and encouragement in her first days so that she 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 107 

may grow into a strong, sturdy republic, worthy 
of a place in the world's category among the 
other larger nations, and not left outside of the 
pale to degenerate into an anarchistic state and 
a menace to all the world. 

Her new leader is a man of keen perception 
and honesty of purpose, not only for his own 
subjects, but in the relations they will hold with 
the Entente later, and time will show that he is 
worthy as a ruler of the land. 

MEMORY 

It will be years before France and Belgium 
can forget the wounds they received at the 
hands of the invaders, but time will soften their 
hearts and dull the memories now so keenly 
alive to their losses, and hatred of the foe will 
gradually lessen into tolerance and finally into 
a relationship less poignant when they see that 
the new regime is not as was the old. When 
that day comes then truly Christ's influence will 
have reached through the dark clouds and 
brought the light. 

WHY WAR IS HELL 

"War is hell, truly expressed by those three 
words, and the pity of it all is that the innocent 
suffer with those who really deserve a cruel 
fate. 

The soldier in his trench does not suffer in 
facing death one-half as acutely as do his loved 



108 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

ones safe from the horrors of war at home. 
He is in the thick of the fray waiting with tense 
breath for the command that means action, 
ready to go at a moment's notice wherever duty 
calls, regardless of what fate may have in store 
for him. 

Fear may be lurking in his heart, but he dare 
not show its grip on him to his comrades, and 
so he must, by sheer will power, throw off the 
spirit and assume a courageous bearing and 
forget even to think of the probable conse- 
quences that may follow a command. In this 
he is unconsciously supported by his com- 
panions, as all rest under the same clouded 
vision, or state of mind, and look one to the 
other for invisible support, and to God for 
spiritual help in their time of need, while those 
at home can only watch and wait with the dread 
spectre of what might be ever at their side, 
and this is hell, indeed, as well I know from 
actual experience while in the flesh. Hell, too, 
follows through the ruin of home lands and 
hope for the peasant, and the town folks as 
well. 

Mere death is not the hell of war, it is but the 
blessing and brightness of war. The hell comes 
to those whom death has passed by and left 
maimed and tortured almost to madness, as 
well as to those widowed and orphaned through 
death's call. 

Many a maimed and mangled soldier would 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 109 

have gladly exchanged places with a buddy gone 
before, but it is one of the prices that must be 
paid, though I must say it is hard on him who 
foots the bill and who are offered up as a living 
sacrifice upon the altar of war, and yet, hard 
as it seems, they are in reality part of God's 
wonderful plan for the salvation of the world 
from deadly hate and jealousy that brings on 
war in all its phases. They remain as testimony 
of the horrors of war, and through their sacri- 
fices and sufferings the world will be urged to 
adopt a plan whereby war will cease almost 
entirely from the earth, and arbitration will 
take its place. 

BROTHERHOOD 

When this plan is formulated to the satisfac- 
tion of all and put into operation, it will bring 
brotherhood of man throughout the world to 
as near an entirety as can be had between men 
of different nationalities and creeds, and even 
the horrors of the great conflict will be seen 
to have, through their very horror, brought 
about God's will through the world. 

Stop and shudder to count the cost of all of 
this and you will, perhaps, wonder that such 
drastic means should have been used to bring 
about all this I speak of, but if you knew men 
and their ways, as I thought I did but clearly 
do now, then you would see that no other way 
was open to bring brotherhood about, and even 



110 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

yet there is and will be much dissension on the 
subject before its final acceptance by the world 
powers. 

Politics stand more in the way of its com- 
pletement than does difference of opinion in 
regards to its commendments, but it is not to 
be left to the dictates of a powerful few, but 
to the will of the peoples most interested, and 
will be forced to an issue through public opinion, 
I might say, as the voices of the masses are 
usually classed under that heading. 

INTEKNATIOISTAL POLITICS 

There need be no fear of any one nation domi- 
nating the league, as each will have a certain 
place and allotment of power that time cannot 
change, and politics will not enter into the ques- 
tion at any time, as there is no such thing as 
international ^politics, or party partisanship, 
and national politics will not figure at all, as far 
as any influences are concerned. What a great 
thing it will be for the countries so united to- 
gether for mutual protection and help! And 
America can truly be said to be the mother of 
the league through the idealism of her ruler. 

If war had not assumed the terrible propor- 
tions and aspects that it presented during these 
last years of conflict there would have been no 
logical excuse for the formation of such a league 
and war would have still been flourishing 
throughout the fair lands it ravaged, but with 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 111 

modern science at command of the greater na- 
tions involved war 1 assumed as horrible an 
aspect as could be devised, and one that was not 
even conjectured in wildest fancy or dream. 

WAR GAS 

Little more it seems could have been devised 
or invented to outscale and outdo that which 
was in use to deal death and horror upon man. 
I cannot conceive of anything more effective in 
dealing death through torture than the use of 
the so-called gases, and chief among them all 
for inflicting excruciating suffering to those un- 
fortunate enough to breathe its fumes was the 
deadly mustard gas. Shell or grenade would 
kill or maim, but not leave its victim in the 
same tortured condition as did the gases, and 
even in maiming, health was not impaired to 
anywhere near the same extent as when a man 
suffered through gasing. That was part of hell, 
indeed, to go through with. 

The first years of warfare were years of lost 
hopes and dread defeats to the Allies, and the 
blackest clouds gathered just before the inter- 
vention of America. There were some battles 
before that time that could be called glorious in 
history, but for the most part it was merely a 
war of machinery, with little chance for in- 
dividual glory on the field, as in former wars, 
and when the romance of war is reduced to a 
science of machine against machine for mere 



112 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

slaughtering, then truly it is high time that war 
be relegated to the scrap heap along with other 
antiques of ancient times. 

MILITARY POLICE 

It will take more than mere scraps of paper, 
though signed by all those qualified to sign for 
their respective governments, to down the war 
god over the earth. It will take a competent 
force of military police to keep peace and hold 
war at bay, not that any one or a dozen lands 
will require policing for any length of time, but 
the fear of the power behind them must be 
strong enough, and they must be kept in readi- 
ness to go wherever duty calls without delay of 
red tape or passing legislative law. 

The interest on the present debt, incurred 
through lack of discipline of these very issues 
now at hand, would ten times over pay the cost 
of any measures America will have to take in 
the future in regards to settlement of dispute 
and in joining with other powers in keeping 
peace intact. 

LOVE, JUSTICE AND LIBERTY 

How many lives would have been spared and 
how many homes now desolated would still be 
warm with a bright hearth fire of cheerful glow, 
and how many orphans and widows would still 
be happy in the arms of their dear loved one, 
or parent proud of son in life? It is, after all, 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 113 

but a little to ask of the world and its people, 
but did not one come before the same tribunal 
more than nineteen hundred years ago pleading 
the same cause, with prayer on His lip and love 
in His heart! Peace, five letters that make up 
this simple word, but what a world of mean- 
ing it conveys! Love, justice, liberty, truth, 
brotherhood and humanity to all, above all, 
throughout the world wherever the sun does 
rise, wherever the sun does set. Scribes and 
Pharisees attacking on every hand for reasons 
just as base and selfish and self-centered as in 
the days of yore. 

Don't think for one minute of your time that 
these same men are using all their powers of 
eloquence and persuasion to throw suspicion 
and doubt upon the good features of the ques- 
tion because of loyalty to their constitution, 
which they so loudly acclaim, but which, by 
their very actions of disloyalty, their actions in 
the line of duty well done, they are discrediting 
each day and month of their tenure in position 
of trust. 

FLAG OF GLOEY 

Oh, flag of glory! Oh, symbol of justice to 
one and all, how many, many have stood beneath 
your folds upon the rostrum, not to uphold jus- 
tice with hearts filled to overflowing, but to 
harangue or to blight a man's fair name 
through mud slinging method! Oh, flag, sym- 



114 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

bolic of all that is just and true, founded on 
justice to all, did and does not your folds blush 
in very shame for the ones who feel not the 
sacrilege of befouling your purity when they 
spoke in your name and that of the country 
you represent? 

The flag that led so many bravely forward, 
in riot only the war just about closed, but 
through the wars preceding this one as well, 
should not be used promiscuously wherever 
and whenever desired as a form of decoration 
only, but wherever the flag is used or unfurled 
reverential thoughts should enter into the act, 
and reverence be shown the flag at all times. 

It is a symbol throughout the world today of 
hope, where hope was an almost forgotten vir- 
tue, and let all help by just and sane reasoning 
toward the vital issues of the moment, inci- 
dentally setting aside all political and party par- 
tisanship and do all to put through with help 
and strength and courage of public acquiescence 
on the great measure before you today. Make 
the flag stand for all the principles she was 
born to uphold. 



Is America, after all the sacrifices of blood 
and youth that she has given to war, to draw 
within herself now, when the great work is 
about to begin, and cry, no, no, I am not my 
brother's keeper; I will have no hand in other 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 115 

affairs than my own, bnt when you get every- 
thing settled to the satisfaction of all I will 
condescend to ask for your good will and inci- 
dentally your trade. I am rich in worldly goods, 
and resources of unlimited quantities I hold 
within my domains. These I will barter and 
sell to you in competition with other nations 
who stood as sponsors when we failed, and I 
crave your indulgences in all things pertaining 
to money and power that I have invested within 
myself, but do not ask me when clouded skies 
overtake you and trouble threatens at your 
door. Eespect my isolation and geographical 
perfection as much as do my people, and leave 
me to wallow in my wealth without interference 
or fear that I will be called upon to entangle 
my constitution in foreign alliance. 

THE ANSWEK 

men and women, thinkers of America, will 
this be your answer to the cry of the world 
today? Will this answer be sent to those wait- 
ing and trusting in the strength and the justice 
of the land that Old Glory upholds? 

The Israelites crying out in the wilderness 
were no more in need of help and guidance than 
are many of the nations of the world looking 
toward America for strength and help. Be 
virile, true to form, you red-blooded sons of 
liberty, and emblazon that word throughout the 
world. 



116 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

Stand back of your President in this, his 
greatest issue, and help down the war gods for- 
ever, hoisting justice, humanity and peace in 
their place on the throne. Help those who need 
help at this time, and take the tail off the cur 
through curtailing the powers that threaten to 
kill this everlasting peace, and let the yelps of 
the curs be heard so loudly that none other will 
care to undergo the same fate. 



CHAPTER XX 

FRANCE AND BELGIUM 

IN the former chapter, in speaking of war 
and its phases, I put Belgium and France 
foremost as bearing the brunt and scars of 
battle. This is true literally, as, while other 
countries played important parts in the world 
conflict, France and Belgium were the actual 
battlefields upon which the war was fought and 
won, and consequently they have borne the 
weight and the devastation necessarily follow- 
ing upon such scenes, and it is to them that 
the world owes most, both in help given through 
co-operative methods in helping them to de- 
mand their just rights against the transgres- 
sors, and in standing by them through their 
just claims to a proper protection in the future 
years to come. 

ENGLAND AT WAR 

England shared the task nobly, but her coun- 
try's home lands did not suffer to any extent, 
though her sons have shed their blood upon 
those sacred fields of war-torn Belgium and 
France. She, too, has incurred enormous 
debts, and has been to great expense in doing 
her part to make the world a safe place, not 

117 



118 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

only for her own subjects, but the subjects of 
all nations of the world as it stands today. She, 
too, will have a place in history immortal, and 
she, too, will be in accord with the new idealism 
of a League of Nations as outlined and formu- 
lated. 

ENGLISH WOMEN 

Her women rallied to the call of the crown 
as readily as did her sons, and they should 
receive recognition and commendment for their 
part in the war. 

ITALY 

Italy, too, must needs be recognized as an 
able ally, and while her armies were mostly 
engaged upon different fronts than were the 
other allies, she did noble work for the great 
cause of freedom. 

So, too, of all the other ententes engaged in 
the victory war. All will, in the end, receive 
just reward for duty well done in responding 
to the call in time of need. 

RUSSIA 

Eussia, while in a deplorable state of turmoil 
and havoc now, was at the beginning one of 
the strong allies and the hope on the eastern 
front. For her help in those first stirring days 
of warfare, some part of the glory must be 
tendered to her as a nation. 

If Germany had had no army to meet upon 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 119 

that frontier she would have been able within 
very short time and with quick dispatch to de- 
feat the nations with whom she was engaged 
upon her western border land, and defeating 
the nations that impeded her passage to the 
channel, she would have, with her immense 
armies and modern, up-to-the-minute equip- 
ment, been able to have swept on across the 
narrow channel and to have overpowered her 
greatest foe; so, after all, to the nation for 
whom the world holds pity, mingled with dis- 
gust now, history will look back over the years 
and see that she has had a day around which 
glory and even grandeur has shown. 

Did you ever see a great, clumsy bear, muz- 
zled and chained, led about the streets by some 
decrepit and thieving, lying, human flotsam 
and dancing to the tune of fiddle or organ, or 
just command of this same captor, and if you 
have ever had this experience it cannot help 
but strike you, as it does me, of being an ap- 
propriate example of poor old Russia's plight 
at the present moment. Big, clumsy and with- 
out much conception of right and wrong, or jus- 
tice and truth. She is visualized to my mind, as 
she will be to yours, through this comparison, as 
a great trusting yet suspicious and even dan- 
gerous shaggy bear, captive for the moment by 
the lawless and uncouth mob, but if aroused in 
time to her peril she could in one sweep of her 
mighty paw down that lowly master, tear loose 



120 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

the chain of bondage, pry off the muzzle of 
oppression and slavery and become free. 

She has resources and untold treasures within 
her boundaries as yet undeveloped and unmined. 
Her peasants have so long been held beneath 
the iron heel of oppression that they are little 
above the four-footed creatures of the earth in 
development of mind and in literacy, but they 
could be brought up to a standard equal in time 
to any of the races of Slav blood, and Russia 
could become one of the great powers of the 
world in truth as well as in name. 

She stands today in ail her demoralization a 
menace to the world on one hand, and on the 
other a great and lasting good will come out of 
her state of unrest and repugnance. Good will 
come, as I say, in that she is a great living 
example of just what lawlessness and bol- 
shevism, or in others words anarchism, can do 
to a nation under its control. 

Would any other country care to have the 
same conditions exist within its borders as 
exists in Russia today! America has learned 
her lesson through this same example afore- 
mentioned, and she is taking the right steps 
toward ridding her shores of the danger of bol- 
shevism by enacting laws and also fearlessly 
carrying them through by deporting all un- 
desirable and dangerous aliens. In doing this 
she is nipping in the bud what would have been 
a source of great menace and trouble to her. 



CHAPTER XXI 

TAFT AND WILSON 

THE President parts with his people for the 
second time to cross the ocean and complete 
the great work started there. Tonight he gives 
his farewell speech before sailing, and with him 
on the rostrum another of prominence will also 
give an address. This, too, will be a precedent 
in the history of America when a President 
affiliated with one political clan is supported 
fully in his ideas and plans for a great issue 
by an ex-opponent and also ex-President who is 
affiliated with the opposite political power, espe- 
cially at a time when this same opponent power 
is doing all possible to hinder and discredit the 
President, in both his domestic and foreign 
plan, not only from a party standpoint in that 
they fear the opposite party's power, but for 
the reason that they are in line-up to have this 
opposite party discredited in every way possible 
before the final campaigns for the presidential 
election, but could they but see, as do I, they 
would realize it is a damnable way for men sup- 
posed to represent the nation to act, and for 
that reason, even though personal prestige and 
ambition could lie behind the actions of my 
former friend, it is, as time alone can show, 

121 



122 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

much in his favor that he stands behind and 
beside the President in this great issue. 

THE PRESIDENT^ CRITICS 

Has not the man enough to bear and contend 
with in being torn between two duties, one in 
his native land and one on foreign shores, with- 
out leaving these home shores with a feeling in 
his heart and a cross to bear as heavy almost 
as that which Christ did carry on His last and 
farewell journey on earth, but as did Christ of 
old triumph in glorified manner against his 
foes and crucifiers, so, too, will the President 
overcome in the end his opponents, though not 
through death. I have called shame so many 
times in previous chapters of this spiritual work 
upon the heads of men in the great Congress 
who are acting in a questionable and damnable 
manner at this critical time in America's his- 
tory and when in truth her very honor in history 
is at stake, that I feel I can say little more than 
what I have already said to them, unless my 
spiritual ire rises up and calls them damn 
traitors; to America, to her people, and to the 
President who rules her now, and in spite of 
their opposition will rule her two years more, 
and, gentlemen, to whom this chapter is espe- 
cially addressed, two years means twenty-four 
whole months, and 730 days, less none today, 
March 4th, and much can he do in that time if 
he carries the same determination for right and 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 123 

justice to all throughout the world as well as 
throughout the nation in those future days, as 
well as he has in the past ones. 

a spirit's thoughts 

Question not that these are the words of the 
indomitable lion of old. The same, and yet 
not the same, as of old. A spirit now, but just 
as much interested in the world's affairs as of 
yore, especially where they pertain to the affairs 
at a critical juncture in America's life and 
where the least misstep on her part or that of 
her ruler and lawmakers will send her prestige 
and power crashing to hell with such a thud in 
falling because of the high plane upon which 
she stands today that the whole world would 
shake from her fall. Give her anarchism, bol- 
shevism, which is practically the same thing, 
in the measure as is meted out in Russia, pref- 
erably to letting her meet dishonor through 
political wrangles and their sequences now. 

HONOR 

Surely Old Glory and the bald-pated eagle, 
our own symbols of national honor, must stand 
for more than mere politics as played by those 
in power. It takes a man, not a mere politician 
or figurehead of a political party, to attend to 
the affairs of state now. Deplorable enough to 
have a man of such caliber in that high office 
in normal times of peace, but if such had been 



124 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

the case at this juncture in the crisis it would 
have been a calamity. 

WILSON 

Mr. Wilson, the present occupant of the chair 
as ruler of the nation, is not a politician in any 
sense of that word, nor could he even be called 
a great statesman or an eloquent talker, in so 
far as the word eloquent carries, but he is a 
man at heart and one of studious and reasoning 
mentality, and one who can, and does, give 
serious thought to the problems of the day as 
well as the past and the future of all classes 
and all needs. He is not, in a sense, over- 
prudent, nor is he inclined too much on the 
lavish side, but in so far as he can see his just 
duty in just that measure has he tried to fulfill 
that duty, regardless of powerful influences at 
work to coerce or swerve him from the path set 
out by him through his study of the question in 
hand. 

The thinkers of the nation, no matter what 
their affiliations may be, should be able to see 
all this that I have just expounded clearly, de- 
fined through actions of the past, if they would 
but give this subject their unbiased and un- 
prejudiced attention long enough to study up 
the facts without taking political poison along 
with the facts, which same poison is injected 
merely to cast doubt and suspicion where none 
should exist, and out of purely party reasons, 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 125 

which seem to be the bitterest at this time, on 
account of the prestige gained by the personage 
in power through his clean slate in dealing with 
all. 



CHAPTER XXII 

W. W. AND W. H. T. 

A FINE speech, boys, a fine speech, and one 
that showed the Americanism of your 
hearts and (minds as well. Two noble men 
welded into one in a great cause is a rare and 
glorifying sight to see at any time, and espe- 
cially more so at this time and where each are 
of opponent party partisanship. An apprecia- 
tive audience, forming a great unit to a fitting 
farewell for a time of the chief executive. 

CONGEESS 

With Congress adjourned and the President 
on the ocean, America will notice no difference 
in the running of her machinery, although many 
hysterical politicians will rant and rave about 
the country being in an unprotected state 
through the desertion by the President; but fie 
on such political rot. No thinking man would 
listen a second to such a ridiculous state- 
ment, as the laws of the country take care of 
her in all things, and not one iota of duty is 
slacked by anyone in official capacity now that 
Congress is adjourned ; but what slack and un- 
fulfilled duties were left undone at the close of 
this session. Bills that required immediate 
legislation and action were thrust aside along 
with others of less commendation, but of enough 

126 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 127 

worth to have received consideration at the 
hands of those paid to consider them and not 
paid to furnish a spectacle of ludicrousness to 
the many gathered together to witness the pass- 
ing of the old regime. 

There would have been no need for all-night 
sessions in which little was accomplished after 
all if business had been carried on when it was 
the business to carry on instead of playing 
politics and airing grievances of personal and 
political stench. 

A dignified spectacle, indeed, to see the great 
men of the land sprawled out in several pos- 
tures, dead to the world in sleep, during the 
last session of the Congress and being awakened 
to answer to their call. Great things these men 
could do in that condition of mind and body. 
No wonder history must hide the blot on the 
page that must be entered in its covers. 

Men must be well rested, with brain and body 
vigorous from refreshing sleep, to be able to do 
the best that is in them for any cause, and no 
man can or could do justice to any act calling 
either for strength of body or mind if that 
same body is worn out with fatigue or the mind 
befogged with drowsiness. 

KAILEOADS 

The railroad appropriation bill was one re- 
quiring immediate legislative favor. Without 
it much trouble will ensue. 



128 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

This is not the logical time for turning back 
the railroads to private control, nor is it the 
time to make them a party issue and to hamper 
their workings through party bitternesses or 
personal desires, but it is the logical time to 
give this great mobilized and now nationalized 
project a fair chance to test out the worth of 
the system of government control under govern- 
ment supervision. 

War and its entailments could not do else 
than cause great expense and complicated con- 
ditions to arise because of the fact that economy 
and in a way perfect systematized railroad 
work had to give way to the pressing needs of 
war, and even personal comfort of civilian pas- 
sengers was curtailed to a great extent in re- 
stricting passenger service, limiting train serv- 
ice on local as well as transcontinental lines, 
and taking off luxurious and commodious parlor 
or accommodation cars and stripping the lines 
to a strictly war basis, setting aside all prec- 
edents in sidetracking passenger trains to al- 
low the passage of freight filled trains right 
of way over the road. 

The sudden armistice, coming as it did at a 
totally unexpected time, saved the country at 
large much more in the way of drastic measures 
pertaining to rail traffic and inconvenience of 
travel. Had war continued for another twelve 
months or more America would have seen, or 
would rather have been forced upon a strictly 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 129 

war basis in this matter, as well as others, and 
where the case was, at the time of signing of 
the armistice, that the public was requested to 
curtail all travel as far as possible to aid the 
government in conserving, they would have 
had to curtail traveling in cases where absolute 
proof of the need of travel could not be shown 
to the satisfaction of the officials in charge. 
This is what happened in practically all of the 
allied countries, although they were forced in 
many cases to either suspend night traffic or 
run without lights for fear of air raids which 
were directed against trains and traffic, but this 
step would not have been necessary in America. 

If the government had allowed the railroads 
to remain in private hands during the war 
period in which she was engaged, there would 
have been a sad calamity in regards to the trans- 
portation of troops and supplies; as it was, 
with all lines mobilized and civilian traffic prac- 
tically demoralized to a great extent, it was a 
great feat to bring the transportation of troops 
and war material up to scratch. 

The government has played fair with all rail- 
road employes in regard to all just demands 
made by them, and would, if allowed the main- 
tenance of the roads for a sufficient length of 
time, in normal times, prove out the wisdom 
of government ownership versus private owner- 
ship, and would be able, I am sure, to win all 
points in her favor, though the budget of the 



130 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

past may look formidable to unskilled and con- 
servative people who happen to be given the 
statistics by far-sighted politicians. 

By all means, now that the first great step 
has been taken in the right direction through 
acquiring these roads, the government should 
not return them back again to private owner- 
ship, but should keep them free of political 
stench and filthiness and create some iron-clad 
program in regards to the proper handling of 
the roads through other than political channels. 

LEASING THE KOADS 

This could be worked out on the plan of leas- 
ing the roads, but still holding the invested 
ownership with the privilege of supervision and 
cancellation of all leases if unsatisfaction is 
found in their operation. This would net the 
government quite a tidy sum in the long run 
and would solve the problem of anti-politics in 
their ownership and operation, too; but to go 
back to the old system would be a great mistake, 
especially in these pre-peace times, as America 
cannot afford to allow the threats of a general 
strike and tie-up over the country that might 
ensue, if conditions were not exactly favorable, 
to harass her now. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

SHIPPING 

ALONG with the railroad question, because 
>■ of their unity of purpose — transportation 
— the shipping bill was a most important one. 
America should never allow her flag to be hauled 
down upon the ocean in favor of a stronger 
rival nation's supremacy in mercantile ship- 
ping bottoms, but she should keep up the good 
work started in building and acquiring ships, 
governmentally owned, and leased in the same 
manner as would and could be applied to the 
railroads so as to eliminate politics in one fell 
swoop, but as in the case of the railroad leases, 
if such a plan is worked out, complete super- 
vision and a cancellation clause for violation of 
contracts would be properly inserted in the 
documents. 

AMERICAN BOTTOMS 

The American flag was at one time seen in 
almost every port of the world, and she was 
queen of the seas, but by a colossal calamity 
she allowed her flag to be lowered and lost so 
much prestige on the seas that at the time of 
the declaration of war in 1917 her flag was a 
curiosity in foreign ports and was mainly un- 
furled from coastwise vessels. 

131 



132 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

High priced labor, such as is demanded by 
American laws, was one of the main factors in 
this loss, as no American owned bottom could 
compete successfully with foreign bottoms 
whose nation's laws were very lenient in the 
respect of labor and other little niceties in 
which American laws were seemingly drastic, 
but with higher priced labor and seamen's 
unions demanding recognition in foreign lands 
this law will seem less drastic, and the more 
intelligent crews that can be acquired through 
the higher wage scale will in the end prove 
profitable after all, as the modern ships are of 
different type in the entirety than the old 
models, such as were used in former days, and 
crews of less numbers but more intelligence are 
a necessity now instead of a rarity as then, 
when any man with legs and hands could be 

USed * BKUTALITY 

Many were shipped in a shanghied state to 
be kicked and mauled by brutal task-masters 
and fed upon food that would be repulsive even 
to the lowly swine, but such is not the case 
upon well-manned ships such as the American 
bottoms are today. Brutality is not tolerated 
and the food and quarters are excellent as the 
sailors can testify to. No more of the "Wolf 
Larsen" type of masters, especially on Amer- 
ican owned ships, and incidentally, I may add, 
no more of the " Cookie' ' type of cooks, with 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 133 

due apologies to the spirit of Jack London for 
using this simile. 

EXPOKTING 

America with all her vast resources must 
needs protect herself and her exporting busi- 
ness against discrimination, and to do this she 
must be in a position to protect her interests 
in owning her own ships, not only of the coast- 
wise vessels, but also ocean going carriers as 
well, and in owning these boats she can well 
afford to meet any and all competition in foreign 
ports, due to discriminations in regard to rates 
which could be met with successfully where a 
private owner would throw up hands and call 
enough if confronted with losses through 
lowered rates and high-priced labor and main- 
tenance cost. 

America is now the foremost nation in the 
world today, and she should hold this su- 
premacy in all things, even if forced to ask ap- 
propriations for a while to meet the demands 
of these unnormal times, and then when the 
world becomes sane again and normality again 
rests over all, she will be able to make up for 
the budgets spent at this time, and her flag will 
remain unfurled throughout the world on seas 
that have been strangers to the flag before, and 
in some ports, too, where she has not always 
been a stranger in the days of her supremacy 
of the sea in merchant craft. 

The navy will turn out as fine a line of able 

10 



134 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

seamen as can be found anywhere upon the 
earth; in fact, in my opinion they will be su- 
perior to any found on the ocean, and these 
same lads will come clean and strong and filled 
with knowledge of the seas, directly to the great 
merchant marine fleet of the government, ready 
to take up the duties of peace time pursuits as 
readily as they took up the pursuits of war 
with all of its entailing dangers and discom- 
forts. 

THE CALL OF THE SEA 

The call of the sea is one that can only be 
understood by an experienced sailor or traveler 
upon the ocean, and it so gets into one's blood 
after a time that there is but one answer to 
its call, and that is to again return to the life 
on the ocean waves. 

Life on shore, with its daily monotonous and 
trivial happenings of real everyday life, grows 
irksome and deadly after a short time spent 
again upon the shore, and the siren of the sea 
begins to call and nothing must do but that it 
be answered by a return of at least one voyage 
upon her bosom, and then, too, the berths to 
be had on the newer vessels will be positions 
of worth, in so far that they will allow of pro- 
motion to experienced seamen with rapidity, 
and this, coupled with the fair wage, will be a 
strong appeal in itself, especially at a time when 
labor on land will be in an unsettled and scarce 
condition. 



. POST MORTEM OPINIONS 135 

BUSY TIMES 

America will have much work yet to do in 
bringing back her brave ones from foreign 
shores, and this task alone, not counting upon 
the great task of bringing back equipment and 
stores, will occupy her ships for some time to 
come, and after this work is off her hands for 
all time she will have all she can do to handle 
the exportation of her goods and foodstuffs, 
not only to war-stricken European lands dev- 
astated of industries and resources by war's 
dire hand, but also to lands untouched by the 
ravages of war in so far as the word devasta- 
tion would signify. 

FOKEIGN MAEKETS 

There is a great market, even now, for much, 
but there is a far greater market that will be 
created especially for American products, in 
both the finished and raw state, directly peace 
in truth is declared, and bolshevism is brought 
to bay in European lands now cowering under 
its yoke, and the great cry of American ex- 
porters will be for ships and more ships in 
which to carry their goods. 

If America herself is in no position to fur- 
nish these bottoms as needed, she must give 
way to foreign competitors who will see to it 
that enough ships are furnished to satisfy this 
demand. Rest assured that the goods will not 
be carried at a loss, or for any philanthropic 



136 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

motive, so why allow others to garner where we 
ourselves have but to sow to gather the fruits 
of our toil? 

BIG QUESTIONS FOR THE VOTERS 

If Congress will not ratify a movement to 
gain and to retain supremacy of the merchant 
craft of the sea, then it is the duty of the voters 
of America to demand that this question be put 
to the vote of the people of America direct, 
and make demand that the direct vote carry this 
question without further parley or delay. In 
fact, were it possible, all such big and what 
seem to be overwhelming questions for Con- 
gress to settle should be submitted to the people 
direct and allow them to either pass or veto 
the measures by vote without political inter- 
ference. 

AMERICA FOR AMERICANS 

America first, last and always for Americans 
born upon her shores, and those who have im- 
migrated to her shores and have become natu- 
ralized citizens with the intention of remaining 
so and doing her credit through fair dealing 
in voting for the measures best for her wel- 
fare, and America first, last and always in 
supremacy on land or sea, with power above 
all, gained not through fear, but through what 
her flag stands for on land and sea — justice, 
fairness and liberty to all. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

DEMOBILIZATION 

THE demobilizing of the troops, both at home 
camps or cantonments and of the troops 
from abroad upon their return, will occupy the 
attention for some little time to come. This 
question is one argued strenuously by men high 
in the government service, some being skeptical 
as to the wisdom of the course now taken in 
demobilizing as rapidly as is consistent to gov- 
ernmental plans and ideas as to the proper 
method of the procedure; others taking the 
stand that the enormous expense of keeping 
up a body of men both in cantonments and 
abroad is an unnecessary burden upon the re- 
sources of an already overburdened government 
treasury, and contending that demobilization, 
if anything, is not going on at as rapid a pace 
as they would like to see accomplished. Both 
are wrong in a sense, and both are discussing 
a question that also finds echo in thousands of 
hearts and homes, and that is why I will try 
and give my little message this evening on this 
particular subject, and try and give the version 
as my spirit mind can see its solution. 

THE SOLUTION 

In the first place all must remember that the 
American army and navy of today numbers 

137 



138 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

some million or two of men still in the khaki 
or the blue, and most of these men have been 
conscripted into the service, taken at random 
from every class and walk of life, regardless of 
position, power or wealth. 

The millionaire's son was no more favored 
than was the son of the poorest among the land, 
and each and every man of them held some niche 
in the life of America. The wealthy idlers and 
the hobo, or willing, weary idlers, excepted, 
but of the vast army of men of worth alone I 
am speaking. 

Now, of the many positions that were of a 
necessity given up by these countless men in 
answering to their lottery number, each and 
every one were either filled by others or done 
away with for conservation causes, and that is 
the great issue upon which the wisdom of hasty 
demobilization mainly rests. Would it be just 
and proper to with one great proclamation 
announce to the soldiers and sailors scattered 
over the earth : ' * The war is over and you are 
free to go when and where you will; boats will 
be furnished as quickly as possible to bring 
you back to America's shores, but when you 
reach there no further delay will ensue in re- 
gard to your liberty.' ' Could anyone conceive 
of such a scene or order being conceived by the 
military authorities of the country and allow- 
ing of such disorder as would necessarily ensue 
at the ports of disembarkment, or the camps 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 139 

in American territory! No, Everything in 
the military department of the government is 
attended with system, which at times seems 
irksome and unnecessary red-tape matter to 
those who come under its authority, but that is 
what makes for a perfect discipline and order 
throughout the commands, and each order as 
issued has gone under microscopic inspection 
as to its wisdom and propriety before allowed 
to be passed on as a command that must be 
obeyed without question or delay, and as the 
military affairs of the country are in seemingly 
capable hands, little question can be made 
against the methods of procedure in this case 
under discussion, that of demobilization; and 
going back to the subject of conscripted men 
in service, I will add a few more remarks upon 
their case in returning too hastily to civilian 
pursuits. 

POSITIONS FILLED 

As I remarked before, many of their positions 
were filled by other workers, either of the same 
sex above the draft ages, or disqualified for 
service in some manner, or else by members 
of the fair sex who so willingly stepped into the 
ranks of the workers called to the colors, and 
in many cases these newer employes gave as 
good satisfaction as did those whose places they 
assumed, or as in many cases where female help 
superseded the men, better satisfaction with less 



140 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

pay in return. Where this has been the case, 
both employes and employer are loathe to make 
a change even in favor of a returned hero now 
that the need for high pitched patriotism seems 
to have been passed, and soldiers are returning 
in such numbers as to be a common sight upon 
the streets, where their absence before had been 
noticeable in the days when youthful manhood 
seemed suddenly to have disappeared from our 
midst, and the young lassies drooped in their 
lonesome state and men and women all over the 
country vowed to remain true to the men in 
service and to either save a position for them 
on their return, or to relinquish any position 
that they filled, as was thought temporarily at 
the time, when the need for workers was so 
great that many who had never known what 
toil or service meant, joined the great rank of 
wage earners, as a patriotic as well as a remu- 
nerative duty, but now that the war is over and 
peace treaties are being formulated in Paris, 
how many are keeping their pledges to these 
same boys upon their return to civilian life ? 

Is there enough room for them to assume new 
duties in the workers' ranks when their old 
ones are denied them? 

THE PROBLEM 

In the Middle West this situation is not acute 
in so far as labor can absorb these returning 
men about as fast as they are mustered out of 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 141 

service at present writing, as the Middle West 
is in the throes of prosperity that is arising 
from natural growth and not through inflation 
caused by war, but in the coastal states, espe- 
cially in the eastern part of the country, the 
situation as regards employment for returning 
soldiers is getting more serious each day, not 
alone from the lack of employment to be had so 
much as from the fact that the returning men 
are seeking better positions than were left by 
them, feeling 1 in way that they are entitled 
through service in their country's name to bet- 
ter things than what they left, and this is mak- 
ing it hard for the government agents, who are 
trying to do their best by the men to return 
them to civilian pursuits, to place them in these 
overcrowded cities where daily plants that have 
been busy in turning out material for the war 
are shutting down each day and turning out 
hundreds of employes to add confusion to an 
already confusing problem ; and then, too, many 
of the soldiers with unspent money in their 
pockets want to play the hero role a while be- 
fore taking up what will seem to many a drab 
and monotonous existence after the greater ex- 
periences through which they have passed. 
"While these men are greeted and feted for a 
while, their popularity will not last forever, 
and when it wanes they, too, will add another 
surplus to the problem, and that is why de- 
mobilization of all troops should be made upon 



142 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

a basis in regard to the supply and demand of 
labor, as to dump the troops upon the land 
without system and with no regard as to their 
ability to find employment would be a great 
disaster now that Congress has seen fit to dis- 
regard the bill before her for taking care of 
the soldiers in this very regard. It is just these 
things that, while seeming as of little account 
to the selected few, prove to be the big factors 
after all, especially when men, torn from their 
environments and sent to face death and dis- 
comforts, are returned to private life without 
provision being made for them, as if their lives 
were but pegs in a vast game and to be dis- 
carded when no more use can be found for them. 



CHAPTER XXV 

ARMY UPKEEP 

THE expense attached to the upkeep of a large 
standing army is of necessity an enormous 
one, but considering all sides of the question, the 
army's upkeep in itself is not entirely an ex- 
travagance in the sense that it was formed to 
do no real duty, or accomplish no real good, 
or in the sense that it is a luxury forced upon 
the people of America and kept in large num- 
bers, as counted by dollars, solely for prestige 
or show of power, but because there is no other 
way to deal with this question than by footing 
the bills and demobilizing as rapidly as is con- 
sistent with the best ideas of men in authority 
and who are best able to handle this part of 
the machinery used for war purposes, as only 
through lessening of numbers and therefore 
lessening supplies can expense be cut at all, as 
everything that could be done was done to 
eliminate useless expenditure in military and 
naval departments. 

Some few cases of money spent unwisely and 
unwell may be unearthed from time to time, 
but on the whole the military and naval authori- 
ties will come through clean. 

143 



144 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

HALF MILLION 

As far as raising and maintaining a standing 
army of half million men is concerned, I my- 
self am in favor of such a step, as I think the 
United States is fully able to maintain an army 
of that size at any time, whether for peace or 
war, and if prepared to throw an army of that 
size into the field upon short notice there will 
be less bluffing and blowing by other nations 
every time they have some slight grievance 
against the government. 

UNIVERSAL TRAINING 

It would be one of the finest moves ever un- 
dertook by the government if universal training 
was made compulsory to all youths between the 
ages of eighteen and twenty-one, not excepting 
the high school boys of younger age who should 
be given all the fundamental setting up exercises 
of a soldier's training, which would stand the 
boys in good stead in their later years of real 
military training. 

I do not advocate that a boy should be taken 
from his civilian pursuits and sent to a can- 
tonment, or camp, for three years of his youth, 
but I do feel that part time of these three most 
important years of his life be given over to the 
training for duty as a son of his country if 
demand should be made upon him, and not only 
for that purpose alone do I advocate this train- 
ing, but for the physical good of the boy and 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 145 

for the making of his body stronger and 
healthier for the training. The teaching on 
hygiene that is an accompaniment to military 
training of today in American forces is fine, 
whether on foreign or domestic shores. 

Too much stress cannot be laid upon the re- 
ports of the examining boards engaged to 
examine men for both army and navy during 
the war, and upon the amazing number of men 
whose physical conditions were brought under 
the pitiless light of a military medical examina- 
tion. From all reports the majority of cases 
passed upon were curable, or would have been 
preventable if proper hygienic treatments were 
given or had been used by the afflicted ones. 
So many, many youths between the ages of 
eighteen and twenty-one were in bad condition 
physically, when in truth they should have been 
in the very glory of their youthful lives, but 
through ignorance, as I just mentioned, of 
proper hygiene and through failure of parents 
to discuss vital and important sexual questions 
with these boys, there came this appalling dis- 
covery at a time when they seemed most needed 
in perfect health for their duty to their flag. 
Had these boys been given training along the 
proper lines in earlier years we would have 
seen no such reports as reached headquarters 
and the press. 

The United States learned one great lesson 
through her entry into war that will never be 



146 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

erased from the memory of man or nation, and 
that was the need of clean minds as well as 
clean bodies are one of the big factors in the 
making of a successful man, whether he is to 
be used for military, naval or civilian duty, and 
this great lesson was taught to all men in serv- 
ice, as well as being expounded to civilians 
from pulpit and rostrum, and that is the reason 
that the American army stands today as the 
finest, cleanest, most moral body of men ever 
organized into an army. 

Some there are who transgressed the laws, 
but this number is infinite simally small when 
compared with the vast number of men under 
arms throughout America 's participation in the 
war, but on the whole the record held, and was 
and is still, well merited, and not one soldier 
who returns from service to private life but is 
better all around for the change and training 
received, and this in itself should be a great 
argument in favor of universal training for the 
boys. 

CANTONMENTS 

The cantonments erected during the period 
of the war could be made good service of in 
being put to use as training camps for the young 
men, giving each a certain period of the year 
in which to undergo this training, and choosing, 
as during the war, by conscriptive method and 
allotment. of number, so that all would come 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 147 

under this law and none might escape, without 
fear of reprisal on the charge of desertion, or 
the colleges of the land could be taken over for 
this purpose as commandeered in war time, 
and fewer men congregated together at one 
time. Educational work of great benefit to them 
in private life could be given these same young 
men along with their military training, each 
graded according to his educational standing, 
and in this way given the fundament of an 
education that will do much to help in civilian 
life, and would be a great act of benevolence 
on the part of the nation and would in time 
repay her through better citizenship, as lit- 
eracy among the masses is an asset to a nation 
where illiteracy becomes a liability. 



CHAPTER XXVI 



THE army and navy go hand in hand, with 
the marines over all, and the navy should 
be kept up to the maximum strength, if not to 
exceed the strength of any other power. Amer- 
ica with all her resources is as able to main- 
tain a big navy and army as any other nation, 
and in a sense better able. 

DESTKOYEKS 

The flotilla of destroyers should be kept up 
to the highest standard of efficiency and 
strength, as they are just the boats needed for 
coastal survey work and protection of the un- 
defended shore lines of America, and their up- 
keep is on the whole, when considering their 
efficiency, not too exorbitantly great for the 
budget to stand. This is a type of boat that 
should be made a permanent fixture among the 
fighting craft with well trained and experienced 
crews to man the fleet. Of the larger craft, 
such as the regulation warships, there is too 
great an expense to their upkeep in proportion 
to their worth now, and they are outdated in 
a few years from the time of their launching 
by other types found more suitable and more 

148 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 149 

powerful, even though their original cost runs 
up into the millions. They would, to the land 
man, appear to be capable of being used for a 
half century at least, but experience has taught 
that ten years is a long life for a modern war 
vessel without new improvements being added, 
and for that reason I advocate the smaller 
vessel be made the mainstay, or larger wing of 
the navy, in these days when the danger of 
war seems past and a navy will be used more 
for show of power and prestige than for actual 
use in warfare. 

HYDKOPLANES 

A goodly number of aircraft, or hydroplanes, 
should be also maintained in connection, more 
with the navy than as an adjunct to the army 
branch of armament, as aircraft are the most 
effective eyes of the modern wars and are used 
not only to spy out the enemy positions but 
to wreak damage as well, where other means of 
conveying bombs or ability to strike at the foe 
would not be available. In this way protection 
would be afforded to the coasts from hostile 
fleets, and transports of troops be detected 
through the eyes of a hydroplane soaring high 
above, connected by radio with the shore or 
fleet, warning of approaching danger, and if 
not able to destroy with bombs could give the 
range to the gunners on board the warships 
or on a shore battery. 

11 



150 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

OVER-PREPAREDNESS 

Protection and preparedness, to a certain 
extent, are always needed regardless of any and 
all peace pacts or treaties to prevent a nation 
being taken by surprise by armed forces, but I 
do not advocate a standing army or navy of 
unnecessary strength, which would in time 
prove more of a boomerang in a political sense 
than it would or could prove itself useful. 

THE NATIONAL GUARD 

A wise move would be the abolishing of the 
National Guards throughout the country and 
using the appropriations made in their favor 
each year for other and more useful purposes, 
and if in need of military forces in any way 
use the Federal men instead and give them 
something to do. There is no reason that I 
can see for maintaining these civil or state or- 
ganizations and appropriating money for their 
use when Federal troops can be called if need 
arises on short notice and seem to carry more 
weight or authority with the masses than do the 
state troops, as all transgressors stand more in 
fear of U. S. governmental authority than do 
they at state laws. This, no doubt, will cause 
quite a bit of contention among advocates and 
all those who favor the restoration of the 
National Guard to full powers again, but as I 
say, in my opinion as I see the situation now, 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 151 

it is a sheer waste of the people's money col- 
lected by taxation from a tax burdened nation, 
a condition brought about through war's de- 
mands. 



CHAPTEE XXVII 

DIVISION OF THE SPOILS 

THE time is here when all questions in re- 
gard to the settlement of the war should 
and must be threshed out to the satisfaction of 
all powers concerned, and in such a way that 
no sediment of dissatisfaction will remain to 
bring about a rift later that could in time 
widen into a breach, and then into war. Such 
a question that is in controversy now among 
the peace delegates is the one of division of 
spoils of war among the Allies, each claiming 
certain parcels as their own through capture 
during the period of the war. This question 
must be settled, as I say, definitely and for all 
time before peace negotiations are gone into 
much deeper, and the logical way to settle all 
disputes is to declare the spoils of war the 
property of all allied nations engaged together 
in the war at the time of capture, and all to be 
divided on an equal basis with preferences to 
none. 

There are certain captured articles, as I will 
refer to them by that name as I go along, that 
can hardly be called contraband, or subject to 
capture, even through the excuse of war, and 

152 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 153 

one of these articles is a cable laid beneath the 
sea and used to connect more than one neutral 
nation outside of the colonies of a belligerent 
nation. It is entirely within reason and proper 
rights to disconnect this article in any way pos- 
sible so as to interfere with messages sent 
through its medium, but no one country should 
be allowed to maintain control of an article of 
this kind by calling it a prize of war, especially 
where it affects other nations not so engaged 
and where it could be used to react unfavorably 
against them in times of peace. This, then, 
should be made an issue of in the conference, 
and America being one of the countries affected 
by the capture, or so-called capture, by England 
of the Pacific cables should insist upon their 
disposal being made in such a way that will 
not work to her detriment in the future, as it 
would lay her at the mercy almost of foreign 
competitors in the trade fields of the West. 

It is not right, nor is it just, that any one 
nation when fighting as an ally, aligned with 
other nations who are practically acting as her 
buffers, should take advantage of them in any 
way, although America came into the war after 
this so-called capture was effected in a sense. 

America, it cannot be denied, did act in a 
buffer state in regard to England, as were it 
not for her interference at the time she entered, 
not as an ally, but as an associate in war, there 
would have been others deciding the fate of 



154 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

the spoils of war and others dictating as to 
their disposal, as all the world knows today. 

It is not my desire to bring np a controversy 
over the war, and the part all played in it at 
this time, bnt I do think that a bit of a reminder 
will not go amiss in a case where discrimination 
seems as if it might be assured against the 
United States, and that is the one thing that I 
cannot stand. 

T. R. AT THE PEACE CONFERENCE 

I was not invited to be a participant in the 
conference now going on at Paris, and for that 
reason, perhaps, it is best that I do not try 
and take up the questions being settled there, 
as my spirit self can overhear them, for I will 
confess that I am an unbidden guest at the feast, 
but luckily no one guesses the fact as I keep 
within my bounds and am rather quiet for a 
spirit of my caliber, even though at times 
I would revolt, I hold my peace, but I can dis- 
cuss, without causing contention, the questions 
as they are released one by one to the press, 
though I am afraid that the peace conference 
will be in session long after I close this script 
on data, so I will confine my writings, as I say, 
to topics that can be discussed at this time, and 
then perhaps later I will return to take up the 
work again when I feel that I can do some good 
in my way. 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 155 

BOUNDAEY OF FKANCE 

There is another question, though, that will 
and does come up in the conference, but which 
has been discussed outside the closed chambers 
as well, and that is the proper boundary line to 
be established to protect France from further 
invasion. 

France will be conceded Alsace-Lorraine, that 
is a settled fact, as all the world feels that this 
is but her just due for what she has undergone 
in the World War, but further than that steps 
cannot be taken in all justice to establish a 
buffer state, seizing German soil for the pur- 
pose. This would be fair neither to the new 
Germany nor to the buffer states so created, 
and could but stand as a constant irritation 
and reminder in the future days when all the 
world will be trying to forget. 

COLONIES 

All captured German colonies should be held 
as international charges, and neither returned 
to German control nor given over as prizes to 
any one nation, even though that nation may 
have had the honor of capturing the colonies. 
Also, any navigable streams under discussion 
should come under the same head and be treated 
of in the same manner and made international 
as far as that they should be controlled, and 
all disputes settled through international arbi- 



156 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

tration. This would settle all disputes in re- 
gard to the disposal of such articles in such a 
way that there could be no ill feeling brought 
to play against any one nation, for all would 
have a say in the matter, and all certainly have 
paid a high enough price to gain that end. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

WILSON AT PAKIS 

THE position of the President as occupied 
in the peace chambers is not one to be 
envied, as he is looked upon by all the smaller 
principalities as a sponsor for them, and they 
look to him to settle all their difficulties and 
trials, not only those brought out by war, but 
some others that had been brewing for years, 
and this task in itself is not one to be over- 
looked or sidestepped, as often it is one of 
these small country's affairs that bring about 
larger entanglements. The allied nations had 
disposed of this question through secret pacts 
long ago in a simple way that would suit them 
admirably, and that was by simply divid- 
ing these smaller states as prizes of war, we 
might say, and giving to each nation in the pact 
those most suited to her needs. While this was 
in entire accord to the larger nations, it cer- 
tainly did not fit in with the hopes and future 
aspirations of the principalities so involved and 
would have brought about endless friction if 
this step had been allowed to consummate, and 
in being asked to act in their behalf to see that 
full justice is done their case, President Wilson 
is being placed in a mighty precarious position 
in relation to his popularity with the entente, 

157 



158 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

or representative nations, as he will be placed 
in the position of dictator in this matter. It 
is one that requires diplomacy and tact in the 
handling, as the entente nations will have to 
relinquish their former plans and renig on their 
promises, one to the other, and this is not always 
an easy matter to accomplish graciously at the 
instigation of what seems to them a foreign in- 
truder into their affairs, even though that 
foreigner is bound with them and to them with 
bonds of blood and spent steel. 

It is not of the people of the nations involved 
and their opinions that I speak in this manner, 
but of the opinions of the statesmen of the 
nations engaged in the peace parleys and whose 
opinions will affect Mr. Wilson more easily in 
as much as he will be affected by their change 
of manner toward him as time goes on. This 
he will be able to discern, even though to the 
casual observer there will be no change in re- 
lations or cordiality. To a man of his caliber, 
who places justice and right above personal 
feelings, this change of attitude will affect him 
not one jot in what he feels is his duty to the 
world, nor will it cause him to swerve one atom 
of a fraction from his purpose, but it will only 
prove to him that he was right in his percep- 
tions when he saw what appeared to him to be 
his clear duty in being present personally at 
the conference until it closed, and all pacts were 
assured of acceptance, even if in doing so he 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 159 

imperiled his position and prestige in the eyes 
of some of his narrow-minded countrymen. 
This is big game that is being stalked, and care 
must be taken that the hunter is ready at the 
logical moment, and his aim must be true else 
he himself fall victim to the others cunning in 
an unguarded moment. 

I know and can verify my knowledge by per- 
sonal vision and insight now that Mr. Wilson 
is a match for any of the statesmen abroad, but 
that clearness of mind and knowledge of 
technics would avail him nothing if he were not 
personally present at Paris to deal directly with 
the men in person and to handle all questions 
as they come up for discussion at first hand. 
This is not a time when the affairs involving 
the future of America and her freedom in all 
lines, as well as the freedom of the world, should 
be left in the hands of secondary agents, but 
it is the duty of the highest in the land to see 
that no loophole of injustice is left to bring 
about cause for contention later. 

INDEMNITY 

Another question that will cause strained re- 
lations, though not a rupture, will be the Presi- 
dent's clear stand on what he considers just or 
unjust claims and deals against German terri- 
tory and Germany in general. In this matter 
more ill-feeling will be engendered than in any 
other issue brought up before the board, as the 
allied nations expect to bring exorbitant claims 



160 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

against the former empire, and these he feels 
he cannot in all jnstice sanction. This will cause 
much discussion and many opinions will be 
freely expressed on this same question through- 
out the whole world, but no matter which way 
the pendulum of public opinions swing, he will 
stand firm in this one respect, as it involves the 
future peace of the world in a larger sense than 
it is looked upon today. 

If Germany is given justice and is not forced 
to bankrupt her resources to pay the debts in- 
curred by her militant leaders who had usurped 
the powers of the throne for their own exploit- 
ance, she will in time settle down to become a 
normal, well directed republic, for the people 
and ruled by the people, and a credit to the 
world, but if the reverse policy is shown her 
and she is forced into practical serfdom through 
taxation of heavy indemnity claims that will 
take years and years to settle, her people will 
lose all incentive to settle down and begin their 
lives upon a new plan under a peaceful regime, 
but revolt upon revolt will ensue that will in 
time react upon all of Europe, though its fangs 
will never be strong or long enough to penetrate 
far into America's shores. 

gekmany's mokal debt 

The outrages perpetrated in the name of war 
can never be repaid by money, nor can the lives 
sacrificed to war be paid for by the golden 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 161 

medium. This money that will be claimed then 
can only salve the wounds, for could its power 
heal the wounds and assuage the broken hearts 
left in war's wake I would feel grieved for the 
people indeed. It would be a step downward, 
I can assure you, if the people who lost and 
suffered through the war could be satisfied 
through a mere monetary settlement, high as 
money values are held upon the earth. 

The debt that Germany owes to the world is 
one that cannot be paid in gold, or in reparation 
of any nature, as it is not within her power or 
power of any living man to restore to the 
nations their flowering young manhood so sadly 
sacrificed to war, or can she pay to herself the 
debt she owes her own subjects for the loss of 
their kin as well. True, she can pay enough to 
restore, in a way, devastated districts and 
ravaged industrial plants and help build up 
the home lands in general, but her greatest pay- 
ment, and one that will go the farthest in pay- 
ing her debt to the world, will be her joining 
in accord with other nations in making the 
world a safe place, by first making herself a 
safe nation for all the world to trust and then 
helping to bring everlasting peace and brother- 
hood among the nations with the nations of 
the whole universe. This she can do without 
loss to herself of either prestige or honor, as 
she holds neither in the eyes of the world today, 
but through such a compact she could gain both. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

U. S. AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS 

IT is up to America to either get in or stay 
out — getting into the league she loses noth- 
ing and gains much, much in the way that she 
retains her prestige and her honor before the 
world, loses nothing because she stakes nothing, 
and it's a winning game at that. If she stays out 
on the advice of those too narrow to see the 
whole at one time, she loses, as I say, her 
prestige and her honor, and that means prac- 
tically everything to a nation, and she holds 
on tight to her Monroe Doctrine, a doctrine that 
has stood much abuse from politicians mouth- 
ing its phrases and not understanding one item 
of their real meaning. That doctrine is an 
elastic one and can be stretched in need to meet 
and fit in with most any argument, but it would 
not be worth more than the proverbial scrap 
of paper if it had nothing behind it to enforce 
its meaning on the world, as the wording itself 
is not formidable enough to scare any nation 
with designs upon the territories it covers if the 
United States armed forces were not visualized 
between the lines. 

America holds herself as being splendidly 
isolated on account of her ocean boundaries, 

162 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 163 

but she has territory on the south that could 
easily be invaded by foreign powers and used 
as a base to work against her, and it would take 
more than a standing army of 500,000 to parole 
and protect that boundary against invaders if 
they were invaders with a determination and 
will behind them. 

It is just such possibilities as that one bound- 
ary possesses that calls for America's joining 
into the league, not that she need ever fear 
that her armies could not handle the situation 
if presented to them, but why not take the steps 
necessary to avoid such a possibility! 

MONEOE DOCTKIKE AND MEXICO 

There again is a question that the Monroe 
Doctrine covers in some ways. It gives protec- 
tion to the lawless elements in Mexico in their 
uprising against foreign residents there, as 
America is loathe to enter into that country as 
an invader, even against the lawless element in 
defense of her own citizens, and she surely does 
not go in defense of foreigners quartered there, 
and the doctrine does not admit of foreign in- 
vasion by allowing armed forces of foreign land 
to enter and demand reparation, or war that 
would in the end lead to conquest, and so 
guerilla tactics go on unmolested, and he who 
kills and wins is hero for the time until another 
supersedes him through better aim or more 
powerful followers. 



164 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

This we know has been going on for years, 
and as America suffers little from invaders and 
the troubles brewing constantly, not verging 
too near her borders, she rightly deems it none 
of her affair to interfere in an aggressive man- 
ner, and in this she is right, in so far that to 
sacrifice American blood to save that land for 
itself woulcf be almost as futile as pouring 
water, water more precious than gold, because 
of its scarcity on the desert, from a water bot- 
tle onto the sands to make them bloom, be- 
cause one would be gaining as much as would 
spilling American blood in Mexico accomplish 
now, unless one went at it on the same plan 
as watering the desert would have to be gone 
after, through running a river upon it by irriga- 
tion could the desert he made to bloom, and by 
sending such forces into Mexico that they would 
over-run the country as a flood, and by taking 
over the government and running it under 
America's sheltering wing until the people 
could prove their power to run it themselves in 
a proper and law-abiding manner and holding 
them as subjects of the United States, answer- 
ing to her laws and to her authorities until that 
time of freedom for herself should come, would 
be the only way that I can see to bring about 
law and order and safety into Mexico, but this, 
of course, is not a question for immediate settle- 
ment, but I suggest it because of its relationship 
in the sponsorship America owes to Mexico 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 165 

through her interpretation of the much dis- 
cussed Monroe Doctrine. 

MEXICO AND THE LEAGUE 

There is no question but that she holds large 
responsibilities under the terms of that doctrine, 
but these would not have to be relinquished 
upon her entrance into the league, nor would 
the pact allow of any nation violating that docu- 
ment's terms; rather, on the contrary, the 
league would but strengthen America and 
lessen her responsibilities in that she would 
would have no fear of violations occurring be- 
cause of the fact that it is to settle just those 
questions of nations' rights before arbitration 
boards and giving each nation a chance to air 
their grievances before taking steps of more 
serious nature that the league will prove a pro- 
tection rather than a detriment, and careful 
study will prove that I am right in my con- 
jectures on this subject as I see it laid out 
before me now. 

Not only will protection be afforded to the 
nations, large and small, against invasion with- 
out due warning, but many questions that arise 
during the course of time concerning what one 
nation may think is discrimination in trade 
channels and even tariff questions that might 
cause dispute could be settled under an inter- 
national law or ruling, so that fairness to all 
would be the result. As the covenant stands 

12 



166 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

now, each nation would be given free right in 
all matters pertaining to her own questions in 
this regard, and with this I do not seek to 
interfere in my assertion that drawn issues 
could be submitted to the arbitration committee, 
but I wish to convey the suggestion for the 
value it may contain, as it is often these very 
small, insignificant grains of disputes that set 
the whole machinery of civilization at variance 
through war. 



CHAPTER XXX 

THE IKELAND QUESTION 

AMERICA cannot rightfully interfere in the 
-£** Irish settlement question at this or any 
other time, as that affair rests entirely between 
Ireland as a subject and England as the sov- 
ereign over her in rule. It would be as unwise 
for America to try and interfere in this age 
old feud as it would be for England to try and 
dictate or interfere between America and her 
possessions, as nothing gives the United States 
the right except Ireland's demands for freedom 
to become a republic of free men, under their 
own home rule. 

They will in time gain their independence 
and their freedom from British power, but will 
find that freedom alone does not bring success 
and settlement of all difficulties at the same 
stroke. Able leaders and' brilliant minds 
a plenty are to be found in that small isle as 
well as noble-hearted sons of toil, but, too, there 
will be found a class ready to hoist itself, if not 
deterred, into control as soon as freedom shall 
be established, and it is a great problem to 
separate the sheep from the wolves in camou- 
flaged wool, because once in power it seems 
almost impossible to eradicate the breed. 

167 



168 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

England would do well to set this island free 
as part of her peace program. By doing so she 
would receive renewed prestige as a nation be- 
lieving in truer justice to all her possessions or 
colonies because of their aid in her critical 
moments, though some little disturbances may 
have rippled the tranquil waters of peaceful 
relationship between the child and parent 
through fault of a slight few, but not the 
majority. 

IN ENGLAND 

England has many problems of her own to 
settle, not including this greater question, as 
peace did not seem to come to her at home with 
the signing of the armistice ; rather on the con- 
trary labor problems seemed to become para- 
mount, and confusion reigned where had been 
organized system for the winning of the war, 
a result of unexpected peace conditions and no 
preparations made to combat the reverse situa- 
tion brought about through peace in the doing 
away with many positions made necessary 
through war's demands, thus throwing many 
out of employment who were receiving a goodly 
wage in war work and who were not willing to 
take up different work readily and at a vastly 
reduced wage. 

Idleness always begets trouble. It is only 
the busy in brain or body, busy in useful un- 
dertaking, that are contented and happy with 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 169 

life as they find it, and it is one of the big 
problems of nations to keep its people in just 
that contented and happy state of being. 

UNIVERSAL PEACE 

It is not my object to try and solve the prob- 
lems of the internal troubles of foreign nations, 
and so I will go no farther with this subject 
than to acid that I am looking forward to a day 
of universal peace, not only throughout the 
world, but throughout each nation as well. Each 
has its own problems to solve, and each must 
solve them in its own way. 

Ireland feels justified in looking to America 
for help in her struggle, even demanding that 
help as her right, but America cannot be held 
sponsor or arbitrator for the world's enthralled 
or down-trodden people when there is no just 
cause for her interference, and it is only when 
the peoples cry out for help through unjust 
treatment and brutality towards them that she 
can reasonably assume a dictatorship in their 
behalf, and certainly this is not the case in this 
instance. 

CUBA 

In going to the help of down-trodden and 
starving Cuba she did so through purely hu- 
manitarian motives and because they were in 
need of help and sustenance, and even this 
purely charitable expedition led to unforeseen 



170 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

entanglements. America has always been a 
friend in need to the oppressed throughout the 
world without regard to nation, race or creed, 
and she will never fail a needy one in their 
call to her if that need be manifest; even Ger- 
many, that nation despised now of all the world, 
will not cry in vain for mercy and justice if 
that call be just. 

LOST HOPE 

Certainly no country will have had greater 
need of a sign of a friendly hand extended 
through the darkness of despair and the black 
waters of oblivion of prestige, honor and power 
as a nation among the great than will Germany 
in her newer state of rejuvenation, as a republic 
out from under the Kaiser rule. 

Greater punishment cannot come to man or 
nation than the loss of all hopes. To have 
staked all, taking a gambler 's chance of win- 
ning high stakes and then losing everything 
at one fell swoop is one of the greatest and most 
calamitous blows that could fall on man or 
nation, as it brings in its wake either of two 
evils — oblivion that is merciful in comparison 
to degradation. That is why many men who 
fail in what should have proved great under- 
takings often take their lives rather than face 
the world as failures. They seek what they be- 
lieve will be oblivion in preference to facing 
degradative thoughts within others, directed 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 171 

towards themselves, which though not always 
put into word form still can be felt by he upon 
whom these thoughts are directed. 

In cases of this kind where the principal to 
the tragedy leaves kindred behind, he feels that 
he is doing them a justice in making away with 
himself and leaving them free to carry on with- 
out the blot of his presence to retard them, 
and so it is with nations as with individuals. 
When the structure falls the ruler who has been 
the cause of disaster should obliterate himself 
in a manner that would cause the least discus- 
sion, and should leave his people free to re- 
make their lives and their nation without his 
retarding presence or shadow as a dark, fore- 
boding cloud ever on the horizon, darkening 
their skies for all time. 



CHAPTEE XXXI 

CLEAR VISION 

PEOBLEMS that to me seemed, while on 
earth, complicated and hard to nnravel to 
reach and grasp their true meaning are to 
me like an open book with well written pages. 

Death lends clear vision and true insight to 
the mind once befogged and clouded. The 
glamour and gilt of life vanishes with death's 
call, and bare and naked she stands clear and 
readable in all her phases to the spirit eye. 

Minds of men, and hearts, where lie hidden 
deep secrets and emotions, lay bare to spirit 
eye. Friends who called themselves that to 
us while we still were in physical life have been 
put to the test and found worthy or not by this 
ability of being able to read the heart, and, 
thank God, I still can say that I was blessed 
with true friends whose friendship extended 
deeper than mere expression and courtesy. I 
would rather have known one such true friend 
on earth than to have gained riches far sur- 
passing anything yet known. A friend whose 
friendship lies in the heart is a possession 
rare and priceless, more so than any jewel 
that glows and glitters. Few ever gain this 
rare jewel, and few possess the power to be- 

172 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 173 

come such a one. To those of my friends to 
whom I wish to pay this tribute from spirit 
land, I wish to say, God be with you through the 
days and nights of your iniquity, and may He 
bless and lead you into paths of righteousness 
and light, preparing you to enter the spirit state 
without fear of a past to bring shadow over the 
future for a time long in eternity. 

REJOICE WITH ME 

Mourn not for me that I am gone from your 
midst, rather rejoice with me at my entrance 
into the spirit state, where freedom from bodily 
ills and f etterments of the body are the reward, 
and where the soul is pure in thought or deed 
through the clear vision made possible by this 
state of transition. I have lived, enjoyed pres- 
tige and power such as is alloted few on earth. 
I lived, I loved, ran the gamut of human emo- 
tions, lived my few years filling each one of 
them full to the brim with experiences of wide 
range and color, and then when at last death 
called, I passed away with him, quietly and un- 
obtrusively, without struggle or display, and so 
closed the last chapter of my eventful life on 
earth, but not so my spirit or inner life. 

It was not that I wished to go at that time; 
rather would I have prolonged my journey had 
I dared. To me mortal life held much of what 
I considered unfulfilled duties in the interests 
of my country and my fellow men, but in that 



174 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

I was mistaken, else had I a mission unfulfilled 
on earth I would not have been called from the 
ranks as I was. 

DEATH 'S CHOOSING 

Death does not choose at random, but with 
well defined and careful system, choosing those 
upon whom God has laid the finger of approval 
as ready for the great adventure into the un- 
known. Each has a mission to fulfill, and each 
is alloted a specified time in which to carry out 
God's plan, be he or she tiny babe who only 
gasps and passes away, or be they gray haired 
and tottering, feeble and trembling with age. 
Bail not at death's decrees and think not that 
God has forsaken His world when a loved one 
falls under -the reaper's hand. Eather, if only 
the understanding were there, rejoice that one 
you loved was thought worthy enough to be 
called after their life's mission was done, and 
so live and adjust your life that you, too, friend, 
foe or loved one left behind, may become worthy 
of following into the land of spirit life. 

MY PLEA 

I ask no greater boon than that the work I 
have put into these written pages shall not be 
for naught, but that they may reach far out 
to carry the messages I have tried to convey, 
through the only method I found at my com- 
mand, and through the power conveyed by God 



POST MORTEM OPINIONS 175 

upon this medium whose very obscurity of fame 
will tend to throw shadow of doubt as to the 
authenticity of this as being of my composition 
through spirit power, but to those who knew 
me best my voice and manner of address will 
be apparent throughout this volume, and no 
greater proof can I offer than this — my spirit 
thoughts expressed in words, 

IN CLOSING 

I can go no further, or deeper, into the in- 
tricacies of the peace program as it is being 
formulated today without betraying diplomatic 
secrets that are not ready for public perusal, 
or do I care to go further in giving opinions 
upon other matters and questions arising daily 
in America and abroad at this time. I have 
touched upon what I consider some of the more 
important issues of the day, not, perhaps, quot- 
ing opinions of the same caliber as would have 
been my expressions if I had still my earthly 
vision, but while with transition vision has 
changed, mode of expression and of handling 
a subject in my own particular way has not 
deserted me, nor been cast off with my bodily 
coating. 

My spirit stands today as indomitable in will 
as was it on earth, though clothed in different 
raiment. Though my body may moulder in the 
grave, my spirit lives on, ever in the service 
of the land I held so dear, and ever ready to 



176 POST MORTEM OPINIONS 

do its bidding to the best of my ability. Long 
may my work live in the land that gave me 
birth, and may that memory remain in the eyes 
of all as of one who was above all a real though 
rugged American. Rough and ready, but loyal 
ever. To all I bid good-by. March 12, 1919. 



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